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HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) – The sudden reappearance of Covid-19 in places with the world’s best records for handling the pandemic is sending a discouraging message to health officials: Strategies to completely eliminate the virus don’t work for long. . term solution, and even the most successful places can never let their guard down.
After more than 250 days without a single locally transmitted coronavirus infection, Taiwan reported its first case since April on Tuesday (December 22), ending the world’s longest virus-free streak.
On the same day, Thailand saw 427 new cases, a staggering jump for a country that as recently as September had gone 100 days without a domestic infection.
“Unfortunately, in countries that have really low levels of the virus and may have cleared it, it’s very easy to go back,” said Professor Peter Collignon, an expert in clinical medicine at the Australian National University School of Medicine in Canberra. , who advised the country on virus mitigation.
“My concern is that when the term elimination is used, people think that it is gone, so they can go back to their normal activities and not take any restrictions.”
The Asia-Pacific region has largely avoided the rampant outbreaks that continue to plague the United States and parts of Europe, but the persistence of the pandemic elsewhere means it can be reintroduced in places that have even stifled cases locally. with border restrictions and mandatory quarantines.
The Taiwanese case involved a woman who came into contact with an airline pilot just arrived from the US, while an outbreak in Sydney, which had also lasted for months with only a few local infections, may have originated from a hotel quarantine worker.
Japan and South Korea
These comebacks come as other parts of the region praised for their virus control are also under pressure with the onset of winter.
South Korea and Japan had managed to keep cases at a manageable level for most of the year without resorting to lockdowns or the kind of restrictions seen elsewhere. They are now seeing record infections, as that strategy is challenged by the fatigue of people with the pandemic and their migration inland with colder weather.
Countries that have been successful in achieving minimal or no transmission may in fact need to employ much more rigorous controls to keep cases close to zero, said Professor Collignon.
That has been the strategy in places like China, Australia and New Zealand, which have instituted some of the most stringent measures to end outbreaks.
Life in these countries has become largely normalized, although masks are still worn in places like Beijing and Australians are prohibited from traveling abroad.
Rather than aim for complete eradication, Professor Collignon said, it might be better to try to keep infections low.
In this way, “the general population is kept adhering to physical distancing, away from work when they are sick, away from the family when they are sick and wearing masks, since it seems that there is community transmission,” he said.
Travel risk
The coronavirus crisis will last another two or three years, according to Professor Collignon, even with the launch of vaccines, which he says are probably more effective in preventing the disease in the vaccinated person than in stopping its spread.
“You can be reasonably safe in your own country,” he said. “But as soon as you travel, you still take a risk.”
The potential for new outbreaks in the community threatens to cloud some of the most prominent virus success stories yet.
Taiwan is ranked No. 2 in the Bloomberg Covid Resilience Ranking, a measure of the best places to be in the Covid-19 era, while Thailand is ranked 14th out of 53 economies evaluated. New Zealand, which has openly said it is pursuing an elimination strategy, is in first place.
The reappearance of the virus can cause some movement restrictions to return in these places.
Just before the resurgence, Thailand relaxed restrictions on visitors from 56 countries, including the United States, Japan and Singapore, in an effort to boost the nation’s ailing tourism sector ahead of peak holiday season.
Taiwan said Wednesday that it will study stricter control measures for the flight crew.
Vaccination code
In South Korea, whose elite testing and tracing practices have become a global model of best practice, health officials acknowledged that the latest outbreak has been particularly difficult to combat, as small clusters of infections are more widespread and sprouting across the country.
“The virus is with us forever and will not be eliminated,” said Professor Nigel McMillan, director of the program for immunology and infectious diseases at the Menzies Institute of Health at Griffith University in Queensland.
“It is a matter of continuous testing, contact tracing and isolation of close contacts, quarantine of incoming international visitors, sailors and aircrew,” he said.
“Vaccination will eventually turn this disease into something like the flu.”
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