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COVID-19 is a bigger threat than war. So why isn’t it funded the same?
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Date: None

The rise of the COVID-19 Delta variant has forced the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, to postpone the ending of current controls by four weeks until 19 July, but neither he nor his cabinet know if this will work.

The death toll may remain very low but the numbers of confirmed infections are rising rapidly, with hospital admissions now following suit. Johnson faces growing internal opposition – and since he hates being unpopular this means his scientific advisors are likely to be far more concerned than he will admit in public.

The problem for Johnson, even while he still rides the crest of the vaccination wave, is that for more than a year of this pandemic, government action has been too little, too late. And this is despite the fact that this is a country with a national biological security strategy that, on paper, was one of the world’s best. In practice, the response has been disastrous – leading to many tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.

That may be bad for the UK on its own, a self-styled world leader in pandemic control that has been exposed as a world leading loser, but this has to be seen in the context of what is happening globally, where the current disaster may turn out to be a global catastrophe of epic proportions unless some powerful states get their act together.

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Several issues stand out right now. One is that the pandemic is creating a much greater health impact than the published figures suggest. These figures point to 176 million diagnosed cases, with 3.8 million deaths. However, it is now accepted that far more cases are never diagnosed and millions of deaths from COVID-19 go unreported.

Africa’s third wave

The World Health Organization (WHO) said last month that as many as 6 to 8 million people have died from the virus and its effects – or two to three times the 3.4 million deaths that have been officially tallied by countries worldwide.

Also last month, a study by The Economist that combined direct data, where available, with detailed modelling elsewhere, gave a 95% probability of global deaths from 7.1 million to 12.7 million, with a central estimate of 10.2 million. Then there is the issue of complacency, given the apparent success of some countries in curbing recent waves. But in the northern hemisphere, the arrival of summer has been a large contributor to the impression that the pandemic is subsiding.

This impression is starting to change, not just in the UK but worldwide, and with very good reason. In country after country, there are too many examples of things going wrong, not least across much of Africa.

Fewer than one in a hundred people in Africa have been vaccinated and the WHO’s regional director, Matshidiso Moeti, said earlier this week: “Africa needs millions more doses here and now. Africa is in the midst of a full-blown third wave … We’ve seen in India and elsewhere how quickly COVID-19 can rebound and overwhelm health systems.”

The number of cases reported in Uganda have risen twentyfold in the past month, while Tunisia, Zambia, Namibia and South Africa have also been among the worst affected. At least seven countries on the continent have run out of vaccine supplies and another seven have used 80% of their stocks.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/covid-19-is-a-bigger-threat-than-war-so-why-isnt-it-funded-the-same/
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