More Asian countries seeing Covid-19 spikes
While the world watches the awful scenes of India’s funeral pyres burning round the clock and Covid-19 patients gasping for air, other Asian countries are also facing their own surging waves of infection.
The sheer scale of the crisis unfolding in India has grabbed worldwide attention, but India’s health system is not the only one under strain.
In recent weeks countries ranging from Laos to Thailand and Nepal have all been reporting significant surges in cases, in what health officials say is a warning the pandemic is far from over.
The arrival of new, more transmissible coronavirus variants is driving fierce waves of infection even in countries that had prided themselves on so far beating the virus.
‘‘It’s very important to realise that the situation in India can happen anywhere,’’ said Hans Kluge, the regional director at the World Health Organisation for Europe, last week.
‘‘This is still a huge challenge.’’ America and Europe may be viewing a return to normality driven by successful vaccine programmes, but the WHO’s latest update on the spread of the coronavirus this week warned that globally Covid-19 cases remain at the highest they have been.
Nepal’s long porous border with India has put it at risk of being swamped by infections from its neighbour.
The country is now recording 57 times as many cases as a month ago, with 44 per cent of tests now coming back positive, according to the Red Cross.
Elsewhere in Asia, some of these worrying spikes are in countries that had until recently managed to avoid the heavy levels of infection seen elsewhere.
In Laos last week, the health minister sought medical equipment, supplies and treatment, as cases jumped more than 200-fold in a month. Thailand largely managed to keep infections at bay in the first 15 months of the pandemic, but has seen a flare-up in cases from the start of April.
The country’s total caseload has more than doubled in a month. Cambodia had also managed to record one of the world’s smallest caseloads, until it climbed from about 500 in late February to more than 16,000 now.
The capital, Phnom Penh, has been locked down for three weeks, and authorities have transformed schools and wedding party halls into Covid treatment centres as hospitals are running out of beds.