Long battle allows for no complacency

With many countries registering record numbers of infections, deaths and hospitalizations each day, and winter fast approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, it is clear that a second wave of the novel coronavirus is underway.

In the United States, as the country passed an accumulated total of 11 million infections on Sunday, and the death toll rose to more than 246,000, the White House coronavirus task force warned of an “aggressive, unrelenting, expanding broad community spread across the country … without evidence of improvement”.

Adding to the worry is that some countries that excelled in their previous prevention and control work are seeing a comeback of the deadly virus with renewed ferocity. For example, the Republic of Korea reported 313 new cases on Wednesday, the highest number of new infections since August.

So the fight against the virus remains a longdrawn-out battle that allows for no letup in vigilance and tenacity, let alone complacency, despite the encouraging news about COVID-19 vaccines that may start to arrive in the coming months.

This prompted World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to express extreme concern on Monday over the situation in countries where health workers and health systems “are being pushed to the breaking point”.

“Those countries that are letting the virus run unchecked are playing with fire,” he said.

Actually, nearly one year after the deadly virus started to wreak havoc globally, medical workers and the authorities have accumulated enough expertise and experience to bring it under control. The most effective methods include case finding, care and isolation, cluster investigations, adequate testing with rapid results, contact tracing and supported quarantine, as Ghebreyesus noted. Other ways to minimize the damage that the virus causes are to make sure there are enough beds for patients, and enough medical supplies for medical workers.

These are exactly what China has done in its fight against the epidemic, thanks to which the country has basically contained the spread of the virus and brought its economic activities and social life back to the normal track.

In contrast, there are more needless deaths, infections and sufferings being recorded in countries where talk of a second wave is brushed away as “gossip” and where unity in the face of a public health threat gives way to political bickering and division.

While countries should find the ways that best suit the local situation to contain the virus, China’s antivirus success sheds some light on how to face the continuous challenges, and should inject confidence that if adopted, and adapted as necessary elsewhere, victory can be won against this common enemy.