Pandemic is receding in the worst hot spots
The positive signs come with a number of caveats and risks
Amonth ago, the pandemic looked bleak. More than 750,000 coronavirus cases were tallied worldwide in a single day. Infections surged across the entire United States. New variants identified in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa threatened the rest of the world.
But the last month has brought a surprisingly fast, if partial, turnaround. New cases have declined to half their peak globally, driven largely by steady improvements in some of the same places that weathered devastating outbreaks this northern winter.
Cases are an imperfect measure, and uneven records and testing mask the scope of outbreaks, especially in parts of Africa, Latin America and South Asia. But fewer patients are showing up at hospitals in many countries with the highest rates of infection, giving experts confidence that the decline is real.
“It’s a great moment of optimism, but it’s also very fragile in a lot of ways,” said Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “We see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s still a long tunnel.”
The lull in many of the world’s worst outbreaks creates a critical opportunity to keep the virus in retreat as vaccinations begin to take effect. Experts believe vaccines have done little to slow most outbreaks so far, but a small group of countries, primarily wealthy ones, plans to vaccinate vulnerable groups by the northern spring.
The positive signs come with a number of caveats and risks.
Many countries are still struggling. Brazil is battling a serious resurgence in the face of a new variant discovered in the country. Hospitalisations in Spain are higher than they’ve ever been, even though official tallies show a decline in new cases. And in a number of European countries — the Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovakia — the infection rate is worsening.
More contagious variants — or just lapses in social distancing and other control measures — could still bring new spikes in infections that could outpace the positive effects of vaccination. A variant first found in Britain is spreading rapidly in the US, and it has been implicated in surges in Ireland, Portugal and Jordan.
And while most countries have seen declines in cases over the past month, the total global reduction has been driven largely by just six countries with enormous epidemics.
Public health experts in the worsthit countries attribute the progress to some combination of increased adherence to social distancing and mask wearing, the seasonality of the virus and a buildup of natural immunity among groups with high rates of existing infection.
Each factor may not be enough on its own. Natural immunity, for instance, is believed to be well short of levels required to stop the epidemic. But the factors can combine to slow the rate at which the virus spreads.
Although the United States did not impose a national lockdown, voluntary changes in behaviour, along with some degree of immunity in hard-hit communities, may have helped prevent an even worse outcome after the holidays, said Caitlin Rivers, a public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
“During the winter, when things were getting really bad, I think people saw how bad things were getting in their community and made different choices,” Rivers said. “They cancelled gatherings, they stayed home more, they reached for the mask, and those things really do help, put together, to reduce transmission.”
The decline in South Africa has had many causes, but the main driver was the sheer intensity of the infection rate last month, said Marc Mendelson, the head of infectious disease and HIV medicine at the University of Cape Town.
“At some point the virus hits a barrier, because it cannot find new people to infect, and it can no longer continue increasing its transmission,” he said.
British experts attribute the decline to a strict national lockdown put in place after the holiday season. Vaccines don’t explain it: Even though a quarter of the population has been vaccinated, only the earliest recipients had significant protection by January 10, when cases there started to drop. Those early doses mostly went to health care workers and older patients already in the hospital.
And some of the worst outbreaks all over the Americas, southern Africa and Europe peaked during or just after the holidays, said El-Sadr, the Columbia University researcher. The challenge of keeping infections down until vaccines take effect will be considerably greater in countries with slower vaccination programmes.
Vaccinations had not begun at all in 130 countries as of early this month, according to the World Health Organisation, and more than three-quarters of the vaccine doses administered have been in just 10 countries. Many rich nations are hoarding doses, ordering enough to immunise their residents multiple times over, while poorer nations have yet to receive any.