JUST over two years since the official start of the pandemic, tens of millions of people in China have entered lockdown. It is a striking reminder of how things started, and that, despite the feeling in some countries, things are far from over.
At the end of January, the huge global wave of covid-19 caused by the faster-spreading omicron variant was ebbing fast, but now cases are ticking up once more. This second wave of omicron has been caused in part by an even faster-spreading subvariant, plus the fact that many nations are dropping measures to contain the virus,
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The emergence of such fast-spreading variants has shifted the pressure points of the pandemic. Many countries that took a heavy toll early on and therefore had a strong incentive to vaccinate, including England, have now chosen to drop restrictions, assuming that vaccines will keep deaths and hospitalisations low as case numbers soar.
That is in stark contrast to regions that successfully dodged a high death toll at the start of the pandemic. These include Australia, New Zealand, mainland China and Hong Kong, which kept the virus at bay with rigorous testing and quarantine measures. They were successful for a time, but the increased transmissibility of recent variants allowed the virus to break through. At this point, it is clear that public health officials in these regions must refocus efforts on vaccination.
This presents a few problems. First, not all vaccines are equal. China has been using its own vaccines, which are less effective at preventing infections than the mRNA vaccines used by many other nations. Second, vaccine access has been inequitable since jabs were first rolled out. Dozens of countries still have less than 10 per cent of their population vaccinated.
鈥淭he emergence of fast-spreading variants has shifted the pressure points of the pandemic鈥�
How this wave will play out in these nations will depend on several factors. But the situation reminds us what we do know for sure: that this wave won鈥檛 be the last; that we cannot expect to deal with the pandemic in one corner of the globe and not see repercussions elsewhere; and that, ultimately, the only way to prevent new variants is to prevent the spread of the virus.
