Global Covid plan still in distance
Covid kills one person every four minutes as vaccine rates fall in the United States. Michelle Fay Cortez reports for Bloomberg News.
AFTER more than three years, the global Covid19 emergency is officially over. Yet it is still killing at least one person every four minutes and questions on how to deal with the virus remain unanswered, putting vulnerable people and undervaccinated countries at risk.
A key question is how to handle a virus that has become less threatening to most but remains wildly dangerous to a slice of the population. That slice is much bigger than many realise: Covid19 is still a leading killer, the thirdbiggest in the United States last year behind heart disease and cancer.
Unlike with other common causes of death such as smoking and traffic accidents that led to safety laws, though, politicians are not pushing for ways to reduce the harm, such as mandated vaccinations or masking in closed spaces.
‘‘The general desire in the world is to move beyond the pandemic and put Covid behind us, but we can’t put our heads in the sand,’’ said Ziyad AlAly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Centre at the Veterans Affairs St Louis Health Care System in Missouri.
‘‘Covid still infects and kills a lot of people. We have the means to reduce that burden.’’
Even before the World Health Organisation declared earlier this month that Covid no longer constitutes an emergency, most governments had already relaxed lockdowns and guidelines. After spending heavily in earlier phases of the pandemic, global leaders have dialled back efforts and are reluctant to pursue preventive measures for which the public no longer has much patience.
Meanwhile, the infection that caused at least 20 million deaths worldwide continues to evolve, leaving the elderly and those with preexisting conditions at the mercy of luck, uneven access to medicine and little protection from others without face masks or recent vaccinations.
Consensus difficult
A global, longterm plan to protect the vulnerable and to keep a resurgence at bay has not materialised, partly because of how difficult it is to forge any consensus around Covid. From the start, polarised political discourse overshadowed official guidelines on masking and vaccinations.
Even in developed countries where the vaccine became available in less than a year into the pandemic, many people refused to take it. Lack of immunisation led to more than 300,00 excess American deaths, or one out of every two from Covid, throughout 2021. Globally, it could have saved half a million more, studies show.
‘‘We know that politicising public health is one of the tragedies of the pandemic,’’ AlAly said.
‘‘Political leaders leveraged their responses not only to advance public health but to advance their own narrative and drum up support for themselves.’’
Global coordination has also been hampered by politics. China’s refusal to allow independent experts unfettered access to a wet market thought to be a crucible for Covid or to the Wuhan Institute of Virology added to diplomatic tension and mistrust. Today, Chinese representatives were not participating in many global preparation efforts, said Linfa Wang, a virologist and director of the emerging infectious diseases programme at DukeNUS Medical School in Singapore.
‘‘It’s hindering academic collaboration, and ChinaUS collaboration is almost zero,’’ Wang said. ‘‘With these two superpowers, if they don’t collaborate, how can we say the world is ready for the next disease?’’
A waning sense of emergency has also meant the surge of investment in Covid vaccines and therapeutics has also cooled. While companies including Moderna and Pfizer are still updating their shots, trying to make them easier to manufacture and store, many of the hundreds of novel approaches that were initially conceived have fallen by the wayside.
In the US, experts are due to meet next month to advise on what strain of the virus vaccines should target for the remainder of the year. Those vaccines will launch only in the northern hemisphere autumn, with just 100 million doses expected in the US, according to Moderna’s estimates, far less than in previous years.
Long Covid, estimated to affect about 10% of infected people, is considered one of the biggest postpandemic medical challenges. The economic costs are also significant.
In the US, long Covid was estimated to cost $US50 billion ($NZ82.3 billion) a year in lost salaries as of late 2022.
In the United Kingdom, the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year estimated that about one in 10 people with long Covid had to stop working as a result. The number of people with those symptoms, including brain fog, breathing difficulties and fatigue, are rising even as infections are decreasing.
It is particularly scary for highrisk people, who have had to return to work and public spaces where masks are sparse and the dangers are invisible. A family wedding can still turn into a superspreader event, and a flight can be catastrophic.
While people with active health issues may know to take precautions, some will learn that they are vulnerable only after an infection lands them in the hospital. Repeated bouts can add to damage, and that applies to everyone, not just those with preexisting conditions.
Silver lining
The silver lining is that the world now has vaccines and better treatments. Tests can uncover infections in minutes, and new outbreaks can be quickly spotted.
Health experts say immunisation is the best way to protect against it. Only about
16% of Americans have had a bivalent booster, according to Pfizer, compared with almost 70% vaccinated in the first inoculation drive. Increased outofpocket costs and vaccine fatigue could cause uptake rates to fall further. Longer term, the hope is that innovative new shots or nasal sprays will provide better protection.
There are other improvements that could help, ranging from ventilation and air quality testing to better masks. There needs to be more investment in surveillance systems so threats can be caught early, experts say.
The US is also planning to spend $US5 billion on a new project aimed at developing advanced vaccines and treatments for coronaviruses in concert with drugmakers. The goal is to make drugs available quickly as the virus mutates, so the targeted strain is not ebbing when they hit the market.
‘‘Even if governments are tired, we have to face the reality that the virus is still evolving,’’ Wang said.