HEALTH PLUS MED­ICAL CON­SUL­TANT

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic stopped the world in its tracks more than a year ago and con­tin­ues to de­bil­i­tate lives and liveli­hoods glob­al­ly. More than 4.5 mil­lion peo­ple have died from com­pli­ca­tions re­lat­ed to the virus and more than 215 mil­lion peo­ple have been af­flict­ed and bil­lions of lives plagued. This pan­dem­ic has un­doubt­ed­ly af­fect­ed us all, em­pha­siz­ing chal­lenges sur­round­ing the fragili­ty of our health. Ad­mit­ted­ly, as as­pects of our lives even health­care work­ers de­pri­ori­tise.

Hu­man be­hav­iours chal­lenged

It will stand as one of the fastest, most sweep­ing shifts of hu­man be­hav­iour in mod­ern his­to­ry. We saw med­ical ev­i­dence guide pol­i­cy and de­ci­sion mak­ing, analysing da­ta and as­sess­ing risks, as it should be. We al­so saw the rise of myths and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries dig­i­tal­ly trans­mit faster than the spread of the virus it­self, cre­at­ing a pan­dem­ic of mis­in­for­ma­tion and fear­mon­ger­ing.

Then the Delta vari­ant emerged

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta shared by Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC), “the Delta vari­ant is more in­fec­tious and lead­ing to in­creased trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty when com­pared with oth­er vari­ants. In two dif­fer­ent stud­ies from Cana­da and Scot­land, pa­tients in­fect­ed with the Delta vari­ant were more like­ly to be hos­pi­tal­ized than pa­tients in­fect­ed with the orig­i­nal virus that caus­es COVID-19.” What is more trou­bling is the da­ta that sug­gests, “the vast ma­jor­i­ty of hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and death caused by COVID-19 are in un­vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons.”

The Pan­dem­ic of the Un­vac­ci­nat­ed

Un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple re­main the great­est con­cern.

“The great­est risk of trans­mis­sion is among un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple who are much more like­ly to get in­fect­ed, and there­fore trans­mit the virus. Ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple can get COVID-19 (known as break­through in­fec­tions) but this oc­curs sig­nif­i­cant­ly less of­ten than un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple” shares CDC. Hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sion da­ta al­so re­veal huge dis­par­i­ties in their vac­ci­nat­ed ver­sus un­vac­ci­nat­ed case­loads, a vi­su­al demon­stra­tion that vac­cines are high­ly ef­fec­tive in ed­u­cat­ing per­sons on the risks and cer­tain states in the US are util­is­ing these im­ages to counter Vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy.

Mis­in­for­ma­tion fu­els

Vac­cine Hes­i­tan­cy

Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) Di­rec­tor Caris­sa F Eti­enne re­cent­ly shared, “Every per­son in a vul­ner­a­ble group that is hes­i­tant to get the vac­cine can be­come part of the sad sta­tis­tics, one of the thou­sands of deaths that oc­cur dai­ly due to COVID-19. Mis­in­for­ma­tion is one of the most se­ri­ous threats to pub­lic health, and it is most dam­ag­ing when it fu­els vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy,

“Vac­cines are sav­ing lives now and will con­tribute to con­trol trans­mis­sion in the near fu­ture when we achieve high im­mu­niza­tion cov­er­age. The ben­e­fits of these vac­cines in pre­vent­ing in­fec­tions, hos­pi­tal­iza­tions, and deaths out­weigh the risks of side events,” Dr Eti­enne not­ed.

Front­line work­ers

go above and be­yond

Health-care work­ers have con­tin­ued to pro­vide care for pa­tients de­spite ex­haus­tion, per­son­al risk of in­fec­tion, fear of trans­mis­sion to fam­i­ly mem­bers, ill­ness or death of col­leagues, and the loss of many pa­tients. Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al re­cent­ly shared, at least 17,000 health work­ers have died world­wide from COVID-19.

Amongst this tragedy, are sto­ries of front­lin­ers who de­fied the odds, pa­tients sur­viv­ing lengthy hos­pi­tal stays and fight­ing the virus de­spite age or oth­er med­ical con­di­tions.

This edi­tion of HEALTH PLUS pays trib­ute to our Vac­cine Am­bas­sadors, our self­less vol­un­teers and the un­wa­ver­ing ser­vice from our front­line work­ers.

Let us learn, re­learn, in­no­vate, and evolve quick­er than this virus has been.