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.”
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
REVENGE: Trump said he had the support of the Syrian government for the strikes, which took place in response to an Islamic State attack on US soldiers last week The US launched large-scale airstrikes on more than 70 targets across Syria, the Pentagon said on Friday, fulfilling US President Donald Trump’s vow to strike back after the killing of two US soldiers. “This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on social media. “Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue.” The US Central Command said that fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery targeted ISIS infrastructure and weapon sites. “All terrorists who are evil enough to attack Americans are hereby warned
Seven wild Asiatic elephants were killed and a calf was injured when a high-speed passenger train collided with a herd crossing the tracks in India’s northeastern state of Assam early yesterday, local authorities said. The train driver spotted the herd of about 100 elephants and used the emergency brakes, but the train still hit some of the animals, Indian Railways spokesman Kapinjal Kishore Sharma told reporters. Five train coaches and the engine derailed following the impact, but there were no human casualties, Sharma said. Veterinarians carried out autopsies on the dead elephants, which were to be buried later in the day. The accident site
‘EAST SHIELD’: State-run Belma said it would produce up to 6 million mines to lay along Poland’s 800km eastern border, and sell excess to nations bordering Russia and Belarus Poland has decided to start producing anti-personnel mines for the first time since the Cold War, and plans to deploy them along its eastern border and might export them to Ukraine, the deputy defense minister said. Joining a broader regional shift that has seen almost all European countries bordering Russia, with the exception of Norway, announce plans to quit the global treaty banning such weapons, Poland wants to use anti-personnel mines to beef up its borders with Belarus and Russia. “We are interested in large quantities as soon as possible,” Deputy Minister of National Defense Pawel Zalewski said. The mines would be part
RSS