We may have an edge, later

The pandemic has not only wreaked a hurricane of suffering, but it has also disrupted almost every field of health care and medicine worldwide. It delayed immunization campaigns for other diseases, overwhelmed hospitals, sucked up scarce budget resources, exhausted medical personnel, and postponed treatments and surgeries. At the same time, a legacy of the response to the coronavirus pandemic may be innovations and new tools for combating future epidemics.

Before the pandemic, tuberculosis was the world’s leading infectious-disease killer. In 2019 there were approximately 10 million new infections and 1.5 million deaths worldwide. Painstaking progress was being made, but covid caused major setbacks. Tuberculosis referrals—when patients are suspected of having an infection and are sent to the next step of diagnosis and treatment— fell 59 percent over six months in 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. People with active, untreated TB can spread it, so the drop in referrals could mean a surge of new infections. Progress in fighting malaria was also disrupted. In seven countries in Asia surveyed by the Global Fund, malaria diagnoses fell 56 percent and malaria treatment services plummeted by 59 percent in 2020.

But the pandemic may leave behind important tools and new methods for fighting these diseases. The remarkably effective mRNA vaccine technology might work against other illnesses. The vaccine maker Moderna says it has nine prophylactic mRNA vaccines in its development pipeline. The extraordinary success story of vaccines over the past year could raise confidence in vaccines and banish hesitancy. If more vaccine creation and manufacturing capacity is established in developing nations, that will be an enormous gift to the future. Also, the widespread use of face masks to curb the spread of the coronavirus might destroy the stigma about wearing them that has existed in some other areas—such as around the treatment of TB patients.