The world’s fatigue from COVID-19

This article was exclusively written for The European Sting by Ms. Muthu Abirami, a first year medical student in GMERS SOLA  medical college In Ahmedabad, India. She is affiliated with the International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA), cordial partner of The Sting. The opinions expressed in this piece belong strictly to the writers and do not necessarily reflect IFMSA’s view on the topic, nor The European Sting’s one.

Sometimes in life, your situation will keep repeating itself unless you learn from it. Hidden behind the veil of the covid -19 pandemic, lies the lessons unturned.

 In comparison with the first and the second wave, the third wave was characterized by the delayed strengthening of social distancing policies, longer duration, and a higher case fatality rate affecting the younger generation more as compared to others. There was significant differences in transmission chains between the second and third waves. In comparison with the second wave, the proportion of local clusters was lower in the third wave, and personal contact transmission and unknown routes of transmission were higher in the third wave. Genomic surveillance in January leads to the detection of new variants which were more virulent than the previous one.The infrastructure available declined rapidly, while patients were scrambling to secure hospital beds, hospitals were running out of oxygen supplies and critical anti-Covid-19 drugs including a shortage of medical staff.

The third wave had more edge than that of the first two but the third wave could have been delayed with a lesser fatality rate.

But the lessons have not been implemented from the first two waves with human behaviour considered one of the major factors. State and local governments, as well as individual people, differ in their response to the pandemic.

Also, after many months of cancelled activities, economic challenges, and stress, people were frustrated and tired of taking coronavirus precautions. All these are factors that increased the surges and spikes in COVID-19 cases.

Variants in other parts of the world are also leading to new waves of infection, which all point to immune-escape from the current portfolio of vaccines, be they mRNA-derived, adenoviral vector-based, or DNA sub-unit vaccines.

If we consider INDIA which is currently hit with the second wave with a high jump in the cases and hospitals sending s.o.s as oxygen crisis turns alarming. This could have been avoided by restricting the people from attending festivals, election rallies, and cricket matches. But these measures were not implemented.

Taking Europe into consideration, Critics say the new restrictions have come too late and that Europe’s current problems can be traced back to politicians too eager to start easing. “The second wave did not end, the lockdown was interrupted too soon, to let people go shopping. During the third wave more contagious variant of the virus, known as B.1.1.7, seems to be the common culprit behind the chaos

With vaccination rollouts starting, albeit slowly, across the continent, people were starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But while the trends looked promising, the case numbers were still very high. And that became a major problem when the new wave started — making the new lockdowns necessary.

Health officials are observing   Israel, the first country to have fully vaccinated more than half its population, for real-world impacts of inoculation campaigns, are some of the archetypal oddity found amongst the world.

About the author

My name is Muthu Abirami studying first year MBBS in GMERS SOLA  medical college In Ahmedabad. A very down to earth person who loves spending time alone. loves reading books and playing badminton is my passion.