Hong Kong has taken one of the world’s most aggressive approaches to containing COVID-19. In 2020 and 2021, it deployed measures like periodically banning entry for non-residents, sending infected people to quarantine camps, and mandating mask wearing and contact tracing.
These measures kept case counts low—but they backfired in other important ways, as Vanesse Chan and Amy Gunia report for TIME. With so many COVID-19 countermeasures already in place, many people in Hong Kong—including the elderly, who are at high risk for severe disease outcomes—were not motivated to get vaccinated. As of January, shortly before the highly contagious Omicron variant began spreading there, only 25% of residents ages 80 and older had gotten their shots.
The feeble vaccine uptake and prevention measures in place were no match for the transmissible variant, which began tearing through the largely unvaccinated population. By the end of the surge, Hong Kong had the highest COVID-19 death rate in the world, and 1.5% of Hong Kong residents ages 80 and older had died. Many of those fatalities were among nursing-home residents.
“Now, as COVID-19 begins to spike in the city once more, it’s not clear that Hong Kong has learned the lessons from earlier this year,” Chan and Gunia write.
There has been some progress. New nursing-home residents must now be vaccinated, and the government has stepped up its outreach to older adults. But officials are having a hard time dismantling vaccine hesitation and misinformation. Even after these efforts, fewer than 40% of people 80 and older have had three vaccine doses.
Cases are once again rising in Hong Kong, which reported 4,276 new cases on July 26. “For now, the city is still clinging to social distancing, track and trace, mask mandates and other COVID-19 countermeasures in a bid to protect the unvaccinated,” Chan and Gunia write. But with increased pressure from the business world to open borders after more than two long pandemic years, such measures may not prove protective enough.
More than 573 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 9 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 6.39 million people have died. On July 27, there were nearly 1.4 million new cases and 4,426 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending, in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 10 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded nearly 91 million coronavirus cases as of 9 a.m. E.T. today. More than 1.02 million people have died. On July 27, 239,530 new cases were reported and 933 new deaths were confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of July 28. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
Have suggestions for our COVID-19 newsletter? We'd love to hear from you. Fill out our survey here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
More than two years into the pandemic, researchers are still trying to figure out where and how the outbreak first began. Twopapers published this week in Science add more evidence to a familiar conclusion: that the virus spilled over from animals to humans, which led to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan becoming the epicenter of the outbreak in late 2019. Some scientists still favor the lab-leak theory—that the virus accidentally escaped from a research laboratory—but one researcher told CNN that the new findings convinced him that scenario was unlikely.
In order for the COVID-19 pandemic to end, the world needs vaccines that can work against different viral variants, White House coronavirus czar Dr. Ashish Jha told TIME’s Alice Park at the recent TIME100 Health Summit. Those vaccines are currently in development, but—in part due to inadequate funding—they might not be ready for distribution for a few more years.
Millions of people around the world are still struggling with the loss of smell or taste after contracting COVID-19, according to a new study published in the BMJ. At least 15 million COVID-19 survivors (about 5.6%) haven’t fully recovered their sense of smell, while at least 12 million (about 4.4%) still have taste deficiencies, the researchers estimated. Smell and taste loss are just two long-lasting symptoms associated with COVID-19; more than 200 symptoms have been linked to the lingering and sometimes debilitating condition known as Long COVID.
Rapid tests are now the norm when it comes to diagnosing COVID-19. But some experts told me that you may want to get a PCR result, even if you’ve already tested positive on an at-home test. Having documentation of a positive result could help you get treatment if you go on to develop symptoms of Long COVID, which federal data suggest happens to about one in five people who catch the virus.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
If you were forwarded this and want to sign up to receive it twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, click here.
Today's newsletter was written by Jamie Ducharme and edited by Mandy Oaklander.
沒有留言:
張貼留言