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Friday, July 25, 2025

Let us evolve quicker than this virus

by

1424 days ago
20210831
Volunteers caring for an elder at the Mass Vaccination Site, Centre Pointe Mall. PHOTO by NICOLE DRAYTON

Volunteers caring for an elder at the Mass Vaccination Site, Centre Pointe Mall. PHOTO by NICOLE DRAYTON

Nicole Drayton

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.


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