One year on, no end in sight
Nearly a year to the day after the Chinese city of Wuhan went into lockdown to contain a virus that had already escaped, President Joe Biden began putting into effect a new war plan for fighting the outbreak in the United
States, while Germany topped 50,000 deaths and Britain closed in on 100,000.
The anniversary of the lockdown today comes as more contagious variants of the coronavirus spread and efforts to vaccinate people against Covid19 have been frustrated by disarray and limited supplies in some places. The pandemic has killed over 2 million people worldwide.
In the US, which has the world’s highest death toll at over 410,000, Dr Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said the country should aim to vaccinate 2.5 million people a day.
‘‘This was already an emergency,’’ Topol said, but with more contagious mutations of the virus circulating, ‘‘it became an emergency to the fourth power.’’
In Britain, where a more transmissible variant of the virus is raging, the death toll hit close to 96,000, the highest in Europe, as the government’s chief scientific adviser warned that the mutated version might be deadlier than the original.
Patrick Vallance cautioned that more research was needed but that evidence suggested that the variant might kill 13 or 14 people out of every 1000 infected, compared with 10 in 1000 from the original.
In another apparent setback,
AstraZeneca said it would ship fewer doses of its vaccine than anticipated to the 27-country European Union because of supply chain problems.
The rollout of shots in the US has been marked by delays, confusion and, in recent days, complaints of vaccine shortages and inadequate deliveries from the federal government as states ramp up their vaccination drives to include senior citizens as well as teachers, police and other groups.
At the same time, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported yesterday
that of nearly 40 million doses distributed to the states so far, just 19 million had been dispensed.
At the rate vaccines are being delivered, Alabama officials said it would take two years to vaccinate all adults in the state of 5 million people.
State borders may be coming down, but Australians stuck overseas are still finding it hard to get home, with no solutions in the immediate future.
Western Australia is set to reopen its borders to Queensland and New South Wales residents tomorrow, after NSW recorded
five days without a local case of Covid-19 and Queensland chalked up 11 days. Two weeks of self-quarantine and a test will still be needed.
Further easing of restrictions is expected in coming weeks.
However, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and state and territory leaders are sticking to a plan to keep halved international arrival caps in place until February 15. Morrison says the cap is needed to protect public health and ease pressure on quarantine providers.
There are 38,000 Australians seeking to return home, with the list steadily growing. Morrison said the government had exceeded its own expectations, with 79,000 people returning since September.
Thousands of Hong Kong residents were locked down yesterday in an unprecedented move to contain a worsening outbreak in the city, authorities said.
Hong Kong has been grappling to contain a fresh wave of the coronavirus since November. Over 4300 cases have been recorded in the last two months, making up nearly 40 per cent of the city’s total.
Coronavirus cases in Hong Kong’s Yau Tsim Mong district – a working-class neighbourhood with old buildings and subdivided flats – represent about half of infections in the past week. Authorities said 16 buildings in Yau Tsim Mong would be locked down until all residents had been tested.
Hong Kong has previously avoided lockdowns during the pandemic. It has seen a total of 9929 infections and 168 deaths. The coronavirus has now reached every county in the US – even a remote Hawaiian outpost that was the last remaining holdout.
Until recently, Kalawao County, which has fewer than 100 residents and was used as a leper colony for decades, was the only county in the nation that hadn’t reported a single case.
Hawaiian health officials said a resident who had travelled outside the community tested positive after flying home in December. However, that person followed the county’s selfquarantine guidelines upon arrival.