After more than a year of obsessively tracking COVID-19 case numbers, epidemiologists are starting to shift focus to other measures as the next stage of the COVID-19 pandemic emerges.
With rich countries vaccinating growing proportions of their vulnerable populations, the link between infection numbers and deaths appears to be diminishing. Now, the focus is on learning to live with the virus — and on the data that matter most to avoid fresh lockdowns.
“It’s possible we’ll get to a stage of only monitoring hospitalizations,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center, which has built one of the most comprehensive platforms to track the virus and its impact.
Before vaccination campaigns took off in the UK, the US and Europe, a spike in cases almost invariably translated into a surge in hospitalizations and deaths over the course of several weeks. The strain on health systems left leaders little choice but to place curbs on public life, disrupting economies, and forced people with other medical conditions to delay important procedures.
Now, scientists and government officials are keen to see whether the widening scope of vaccinations will finally break that cycle. Events in the UK are providing the most compelling test case to date.
About 46 percent of the British population is fully vaccinated, according to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker, helping reduce daily deaths to the lowest level since last summer.
Yet cases of the Delta variant, a more transmissible strain first identified in India, almost doubled in the past week, Public Health England said on Friday.
Hospitalizations also ticked higher, although most of the patients have not been fully vaccinated.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday last week postponed the end of lockdown measures by four weeks to allow more adults to receive a second vaccine dose, which data show significantly increases protection against the new strain.
However, even if the virus spreads further among children and non-vaccinated young adults, the true test of the immunization campaign will be whether hospitalizations and deaths stay low.
If they do, COVID-19 would begin to look less like an unmanageable pandemic, and more like a seasonal disease such as influenza. For policy-makers, that is the goal.
“We are aiming to live with this virus like we do with flu,” UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock told Parliament last week.
Scientists have said comparing the prevalence of COVID-19 to the flu, which kills about 650,000 people globally each year, would become an important yardstick come next fall and winter.
COVID-19 has killed more than 3.8 million people since the start of last year, but vaccinated countries should eventually be able to treat its periodic resurgences in the same way as they do the flu — and make policy decisions accordingly.
“Comparing to seasonal influenza impact is an appropriate one when talking about things like closing schools,” Nuzzo said. “What do we do with influenza? Would we do this in a normal flu season?”
In a sign of pandemic optimism — or fatigue — about two dozen US states have reduced how often they release COVID-19 data. Florida now reports just once per week.
However, in much of the world, health officials are not taking their eyes off case numbers yet. Taiwan and China reduced new infections almost to zero, but a lack of vaccines means that even small outbreaks must be treated as big threats.
In Taiwan, after a year of relative calm and daily cases in single digits, daily infections rose as high as 723 during last month. The government shut entertainment venues and restricted indoor gatherings to five people to curb the spread.
“When we look at Taiwan, which is the best of the best, it underscores the vulnerability of these countries,” Nuzzo said. “They are not going to be able to relax until they’re able to vaccinate more widely.”
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
RSS