London - It is as if world leaders have a visceral perversity for mixed messaging, seemingly oblivious – either intentionally or for economic and political expediency – of the consequences of their utterings.
US President Joe Biden last week declared in an interview with CBS: “We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the (Covid-19) pandemic is over.”
How this can be when data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the seven-day average of deaths in the US currently stands at more than 400 per day, with more than 3 000 dead in the past week alone?
Even if such utterings do not signal a change in pandemic policy, as the Biden administration claims, the figures are unacceptable for a country which stands out as paying the highest human cost – cumulatively 94 618 978 cases of confirmed cases, and the loss of 1 044 127 lives at September 16.
To their credit, it was left to Norway and South Africa to push back against this reckless exuberance of “Covid-19 complacency”. They spoke on behalf of the WHO’s ACT-Accelerator Facilitation Council, which they co-chair and which tracks the global roll-out of Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments.
Despite the preoccupation of the UN General Assembly agenda in New York last week on the conflict in Ukraine, the stark reality, according to the council, is that the global pandemic is not over, and co-ordinated action, funding and political commitments are key to saving lives and preventing economic, health and societal damage from Covid-19.
The assembly heard that many countries are far from meeting global targets on vaccination coverage, testing rates, and access to treatments and PPE.
The most recent Global Covid Access Tracker data shows, about a quarter of those most vulnerable globally still need a primary vaccination series (24% of elderly persons and 26% of health workers).
True, progress has been made, but countries and societies are behaving as if Covid-19 never existed, and we are back to the old normal. The evidence simply does not stack up.
Whether the coronavirus has already peaked and is reaching its endemic trough like its seasonal influenza virus cousin, no one can tell. At best epidemiologists can track the data and trajectory of the pathogen and only predict future developments.
But as Omicron has shown, it often degenerates into a game of variants and lineages, which inevitably results in policy panic and resource reprioritisation, and undermines pandemic preparedness. So, are we sleepwalking into a potential future nightmare simply because of human hubris in our atavistic obsession with “business as usual?”
Mustaqeem de Gama, a director in South Africa’s Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, who is a co-chair of the ACT Council’s Therapeutics and Diagnostics Working Group, is unequivocal that “without adequate testing and sequencing, the world is blind to the evolution of the virus and potential new variants.
People in low- and middle-income countries continue to die due to a lack of access to antiviral treatments and oxygen.
We must push for equitable access to Covid-19 tools, despite multiple competing priorities”.
For Africa the stakes are still high due to lack of resources, capacity and policy deficits. As Professor Olive Shisana, President Ramaphosa’s Special Adviser on Social Policy, who is involved with the WHO process, says: “The pandemic still poses a threat to lives and livelihoods, especially in Africa, where millions of people are still unvaccinated and do not have access to new antiviral treatments. Now is not the time for complacency, but to act together in solidarity, to ensure access for everyone, everywhere.”
Covid-19 is still spreading around the world. Cumulatively, more than 611 421 786 confirmed cases, including 6 512 438 deaths, have been reported across 200 countries as of September 23.
On that day, says the WHO, there were 454 729 new Covid-19 infections worldwide. South Africa reported 551 new cases with 23 deaths on that day, and currently has 4 647 active cases.
Parker is an economist based in London
Cape Times