Coronavirus: good and bad news

Globally, new daily virus cases have been declining for past five weeks, but there are still too many new infections

Let’s start with the good news about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Globally, new daily Covid-19 cases have been declining for the past five weeks, along with daily hospitalisation and deaths. This is a steep decline in most countries including our neighbour India, which saw over 100,000 cases in September and is now reporting less than 10,000 cases daily. That is a nearly 90% decline from the peak of the outbreak. This dramatic decline of cases is not limited to developing countries — even the US and UK are seeing the same trend. No one has a definite answer to the reasons behind this decline in new infections. World Health Organization executive director Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned the world not to get complacent after seeing this drop in global cases. He reminded that we have seen periodicity in the rise and decline of Covid-19 cases earlier and it should not be taken as a sign of the end of the pandemic.

The other good news is that the overall mortality due to Covid-19 has dropped by 30% globally. With a better understanding of the disease and medicines available including improved hospital and patient management protocols, chances of death by Covid-19 are significantly lower now as compared to the early days of the pandemic. This improvement in outcome is among all age groups.

Multiple vaccines are now available with excellent reported efficacy rates and minimal side effects. According to WHO, almost 200 million people have already been vaccinated. India has vaccinated nine million people. In comparison, Israel has vaccinated 75%, and the UAE, 50% of its population. So many different types of vaccines becoming available is not only a historic moment, but it also provides safe alternatives in case a variant makes a type of vaccine less effective.

So, what is the bad news? There are still too many new Covid infections globally. The more chances a virus has to spread, the more chances of new variants. New variants are more infectious and lethal. Vaccination has started but most of it is happening in rich countries and it will take a long time to reach most of us. Procuring a vaccine is an easy task but vaccinating a population is a difficult process. Until today, only 60,000 Pakistanis have been vaccinated out of the half a million doses available. Governments around the world need to seriously work on the vaccination planning and ensure they have resources available to vaccinate their populations. Having a vaccination plan is not enough unless countries have provided the resources for it and have done preliminary work to administer it.

Another worry is that in a few countries, the number of cases is not declining. The UAE is seeing large number of cases even though half of its population has been vaccinated. Pakistan’s daily cases are hovering around 1,000-1,500. Armchair and part-time epidemiologists are calling it a plateau in a pandemic, while there is no such thing in epidemics or pandemics. Either cases come down or go up in an active outbreak. Such a trend is more likely to happen when a disease is already an endemic or we have serious problems in the way we collect disease information. Alongside, many of our major cities are consistently showing high positivity rates including Lahore, Peshawar, and Karachi. Reporting the national case positivity rates gives us an illusion of “all is well”. Pandemics are a collection of local outbreaks, so we need to also pay attention to any city where the cases are increasing. Until we all are safe, no one is safe!

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2021.

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