In a sign of pandemic optimism—or fatigue—around two dozen U.S. states have reduced how often they release Covid data. Florida now reports just once per week.
In much of the world, however, health officials aren’t taking their eyes off case numbers yet. China and Taiwan reduced new infections almost to zero, but that’s meant even single cases get greater prominence. After more than a year of trying to eliminate Covid, shifting to viewing it as endemic will be an adjustment, requiring a pivot by authorities and the way they communicate about Covid. A lack of vaccines in some of these places has also meant even small outbreaks must be treated as significant threats.
In Taiwan, after a year of relative calm and daily cases in single digits, daily infections rose as high as 723 during May. 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,” said Nuzzo. “They are not going to be able to relax until they’re able to vaccinate more widely.”
With a population of 24 million, Taiwan has administered just over one million vaccine doses. Mainland China, which imposes targeted lockdowns and mass testing when even small flareups emerge, has given out more than 1 billion doses, enough to fully vaccinate about a third of its people, but hesitancy remains an issue given the lack of Covid in circulation.
Some parts of Asia and the developing world are seeing their highest new caseloads of the pandemic, with poor access to vaccines meaning the focus remains very much still on infection numbers.
Even among vaccinated populations, case numbers remain important. The more the virus circulates, the higher the chance it could mutate into strains that are more lethal or resistant to existing vaccines.
People infected with the delta variant are more than twice as likely to end up hospitalized than those with the alpha strain, according to research by scientists in Scotland published in The Lancet. Though the variant is effectively controlled by vaccines, the threat to health-care systems from even a small jump in cases could keep increasing if the virus mutates into more potent forms.
Getting to zero cases isn’t realistic anytime soon, even in highly-vaccinated countries. Most societies have come to accept the reality of mutation with other viruses, like the flu, and incorporate the new strains into vaccines when they crop up. That’s likely to be the case with Covid.
“We have to live with the fact there will be new variants,” said Marc Baguelin, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London. “It’s something that’s always happening in the background.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.