When vaccines can outrun infections
Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker showed that as of march 31, more than 574 million doses have been administered across 141 countries. The latest rate was roughly 14.8 million doses a day. In the Us, 148 million Americans have been inoculated. Unfortunately, some Americans equate getting the jab to total immunity from the virus, which is not what science says. Health experts say people can still spread and even develop Covid-19 after getting a vaccine.
In the first week of March, governors in Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Arizona, West Virginia and Connecticut announced significant loosening of statewide pandemic restrictions like mask mandates and indoors-capacity limits.
From Bloomberg News: “The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pleaded with Americans to wear masks and stick with Covid-19 mitigation measures, warning of ‘impending doom’ as cases, hospitalizations and deaths begin to rise again. Rochelle Walensky, speaking at a press briefing Monday, fought back tears as she outlined a series of warning signals and said she was frightened about a looming fourth wave of Covid cases. The seven-day average for new daily Covid-19 cases is now almost at 60,000, up 10 percent from the prior week. Hospitalizations are also up, to about 4,800 a day from 4,600 a week earlier. Deaths, a lagging indicator, have also started to rise again,” she said.
In Turkey, the AP reported that the number of infections hit a record on Tuesday, with the Health Ministry confirming 37,303 new cases in the past 24 hours. The country of nearly 84 million also reported 155 deaths on Tuesday, up from around 65 at the start of the month. In a televised address following a Cabinet meeting late Monday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 58 out of Turkey’s 81 provinces, including Istanbul and Ankara, were now designated as “red” or “very high-risk” areas and would be subjected to lockdowns.
From the Associated Press: “Critical care doctors in Paris say surging coronavirus infections could soon overwhelm their ability to care for the sick in the French capital’s hospitals, possibly forcing them to choose which patients they have the resources to save. The sobering warnings were delivered Sunday in newspaper opinions signed by dozens of Paris-region doctors. They came as French President Emmanuel Macron has been vigorously defending his decision not to completely lockdown France again as he did last year. Since January, Macron’s government has instead imposed a nationwide overnight curfew and followed that with a grab bag of other restrictions. But with infections soaring and hospitals increasingly running short of intensive-care beds, doctors have been stepping up the pressure for a full French lockdown.”
On Saturday, the government placed Metro Manila and four adjacent provinces—bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal—under enhanced community quarantine from March 29 to April 4 in an effort to stop the record surge of Covid-19 infections. The Philippines has recorded more than 741,000 Covid-19 cases and more than 13,000 deaths from the virus. Current infections are averaging at a daily high of more than 9,000. Although this is still low compared to Turkey’s 37,303 new cases, the Duterte administration needs to do its best to contain infections with stricter measures until it can outrun them with nationwide vaccinations.
All over the world, it’s still a life-and-death contest between the vaccine and the virus as new variants threaten renewed outbreaks.