2020: The Year Of The Pandemic

It was a mind boggling footage. The people walking on roads, shopping in markets and at other public places were falling unconscious at public places.

An ambulance picking the fallen people to transfer them to a medical facility to take care of them. It seemed like a scene from a Hollywood movie.

The setting was China’s city of Wuhan, one of the cities demonstrating prosperity of China. It was the dramatic entry of the novel coronavirus at the world stage. The Pandemic, which was later named by the World Health Organization (WHO) as COVID-19.

The COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), first identified in December 2019 in China’s Wuhan city.

The WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern in January 2020 and a pandemic in March 2020. As of 20 November 2020, more than 57.1 million cases have been confirmed, with more than 1.36 million deaths attributed to COVID-19.

COVID-19 Symptoms and Transmission

COVID-19 spreads via a number of means, primarily involving saliva and other bodily fluids and excretions. These fluids can form small droplets and aerosols, which can spread as an infected person breathes, coughs, sneezes, or speaks. This is suspected to be the main mode of transmission. The virus may also spread via contaminated surfaces and direct contact. Infection mainly happens when people are near each other long enough. It can spread as early as two days before infected persons show symptoms (presymptomatic), and from asymptomatic individuals. People remain infectious for up to ten days in moderate cases, and two weeks in severe cases.

Common symptoms include fever, cough, fatigue, breathing problems and loss of smell and taste. Complications may include pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. The incubation period is around five days but may range from one to 14 days.

The authorities worldwide responded to the pandemic by implementing travel restrictions, lockdowns, workplace infection controls and facility closures. Many countries have also worked to increase testing capacity and contact tracing of the infected. The response caused economic and social disruption, food shortages, closure of educational institutions etc across the globe.

China

After the initial spike in China, cases of the contagious disease were reported in other parts of the world. China after initial hiccups and some efforts to keep lid on the cases of the disease, acted boldly with extensive lockdowns, fumigations and other measures to contain the coronavirus cases in Wuhan and other parts of the country. The country had admirably contained the soaring cases of the raging pandemic to a large extent by March this year.

The contagion spread like a forest fire in China’s neighbors and other Asian countries as well as Europe, North America and other parts of the world by February.

Starting from December 2019, the number of coronavirus cases in Hubei province in China gradually increased, reaching 60 by 20 December and 266 by 31 December. That same day, the WHO received reports of a cluster of viral pneumonia cases of an unknown cause in Wuhan and an investigation was launched at the start of January 2020.

According to official Chinese sources, these early cases were mostly linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which also sold live animals. However, in May 2020, the director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said animal samples collected from the seafood market had tested negative for the virus, indicating the market was not the source of the initial outbreak.

On 24 December 2019, Wuhan Central Hospital sent a sample from an unresolved clinical case to a sequencing company. The company informed the hospital the results of the test, showing a new coronavirus.

On 30 December 2019, a test report addressed to Wuhan Central Hospital stated that there was an erroneous positive result for SARS, causing a group of doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital to alert their colleagues and relevant hospital authorities of the result. Eight of those doctors, were later admonished by the police for spreading false rumours and another doctor, Ai Fen, was reprimanded by her superiors for raising the alarm.Soon, the Wuhan health authorities issued a notice to various medical institutions about “the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause”.The next day, the Wuhan Health Commission made the first public announcement of a pneumonia outbreak of unknown cause, confirming 27 cases.

The virus cases rapidly spread from China to other countries around the world including neighboring Japan and South Korea, other Asian countries, Europe, North America, and other parts of the world. The contagion after mostly being overcome by China in March, rapidly changed its epicentre to Europe as the virus hit hard first Italy and then Spain, France, UK and other European countries, the United States, Brazil and India.

The WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, and then a pandemic on 11 March 2020 as Italy, Iran, South Korea, and Japan reported increasing numbers of cases. Later that month, the number of cases outside China surpassed the number of cases inside China.

Italy

The virus was first confirmed to have spread to Italy on January 31, 2020, when two Chinese tourists in Rome tested positive for the virus. One week later an Italian man repatriated back to Italy from Wuhan, was hospitalised and confirmed as the third case in Italy. The first death by the virus was reported on 22 February. By the beginning of March, the virus had spread to all regions of Italy. As of November Italy has reported around 14,31,000 cases and 50,453 deaths by novel coronavirus.

Iran

The first confirmed infections of the virus in Iran reported on 19 February 2020, in the holy city of Qom. Iran has announced 44,327 deaths by the pandemic till November. Pakistan received its first cases of coronavirus from Iran as two pilgrims returned from the country found positive in Karachi and Islamabad on February 26.

Iran became a centre of the spread of the virus after China during February 2020. More than ten countries had traced their cases back to Iran by 28 February, indicating the outbreak may have been more severe than the 388 cases reported by the Iranian government by that date. The Iranian Parliament was shut down, with 23 of its 290 members reported to have tested positive for the virus on 3 March 2020. On 15 March 2020, the Iranian government reported a hundred deaths in a single day, the most recorded in the country since the outbreak began. At least twelve sitting or former Iranian politicians and government officials had died from the disease by 17 March 2020. By 23 March 2020, Iran was experiencing fifty new cases every hour and one new death every ten minutes due to coronavirus.

According to a WHO official, there may be five times more cases in Iran than what is being reported. It is also suggested that U.S. sanctions on Iran may be affecting the country’s financial ability to respond to the viral outbreak. On 20 April 2020, Iran reopened shopping malls and other shopping areas across the country. After reaching a low in new cases in early May, a new peak was reported on 4 June 2020, raising fear of a second wave. On 18 July 2020, President Rouhani estimated that 25 million Iranians had already become infected, which is considerably higher than the official count. Leaked data suggest that 42,000 people had died with COVID-19 symptoms by 20 July 2020, nearly tripling the 14,405 officially reported by that date.

Pakistan

The virus was confirmed to have reached Pakistan on 26 February 2020, when two cases were recorded, a student in Karachi who had just returned from Iran and another person in Islamabad. On 18 March, cases had been registered in all four provinces, Azad Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan and Islamabad Capital Territory and by 17 June, each district in Pakistan had recorded at least one confirmed case of COVID-19.

Pakistan’s initial response to the rising cases of highly contagious disease could be termed as ‘haphazard’ at best. Pakistani citizens returning from other countries mostly allowed entry without much ado. The flights from other countries were landing at national airports carrying Pakistani passengers, which were being allowed entry without quarantine and other precautions.

The camps set up at Pakistan’s border with Iran were also a mismanaged affair, which caused the spread of the virus rapidly. The first two cases reported in the port city of Karachi and Capital Islamabad on the same date, February 26, had Iranian connection. Later, local transmission of the virus overcame the cases coming from foreign lands.

Pakistani authorities after initial bickering over the rising cases, regrouped and made an organized and concerted effort to contain the epidemic with lockdowns and other precautionary measures under an umbrella body representing all stakeholders in the country.

On 15 June, daily new confirmed case numbers reached their peak, with 6825 new cases recorded, but since then, daily cases and the percentage of people testing positive plunged downwards. In late June, the number of active cases in Pakistan stabilized and in July, started showing a significant decrease. The pandemic reached its climax in mid of June and a slide in the number of daily cases reported in July, August and September.

Second Wave: The second spike of the virus infections in Pakistan began in October and has been raging currently with soaring numbers of infections and deaths. According to experts, complacency could be a major factor as people are not following the standard operating procedures (SOPs) to avoid the infection.

India

The first case of Covid-19 in India was reported on 30 January 2020. India ordered a nationwide lockdown for the entire population starting 24 March 2020. Six big cities of the country account for around half of all reported cases in India, Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata.

In September 2020, India had the largest number of confirmed cases in Asia and the second-highest number in the world,behind the United States, with the number of total confirmed cases breaching the 100,000 mark on 19 May 2020, one million on 16 July and five million confirmed cases on 16 September 2020. The country set a new record of most cases in a single day on 16 September 2020, with almost 98,000 cases reported that day.The country has reported total 93,90,000 cases with 8.8 million recovered patients and around 1,37,000 deaths till November.

South Korea

Covid-19 was spread to South Korea on 20 January 2020 from China. The nation’s health agency reported a significant increase in confirmed cases on 20 February, largely attributed to a gathering of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. Shincheonji devotees visiting Wuhan were suspected to be the origin of the outbreak. By 22 February, among 9,336 followers of the church, 1,261 or about 13 percent reported symptoms. South Korea declared the highest level of alert on 23 February 2020. On 29 February, more than 3,150 confirmed cases were reported. All South Korean military bases were quarantined after tests showed three soldiers had the virus. Airline schedules were also changed.

South Korea introduced what was considered the largest and best-organised programme in the world to screen the population for the virus, isolate any infected people, and trace and quarantine those who contacted them. Screening methods included mandatory self-reporting of symptoms by new international arrivals through mobile application, drive-through testing for the virus with the results available the next day. Despite some early criticisms, South Korea’s programme is considered a success in controlling the outbreak without quarantining entire cities.

Japan

The Japanese government confirmed the country’s first case of the disease on 16 January 2020 in a resident of Kanagawa Prefecture who had returned from Wuhan, China. This was followed by a second outbreak that was introduced by travelers and returnees from Europe and the United States between 11 March and 23 March. According to the Japanese National Institute of Infectious Diseases, the majority of viruses spreading in Japan derived from the European type while those of the Wuhan disappeared in March. At the end of October, the number of confirmed cases in the country crossed the 100,000-mark.

Japan’s death rate per capita from coronavirus is one of the lowest in the developed countries, despite its aging population. Factors suggested to explain this include the government response, a milder strain of the virus, cultural habits such as bowing etiquette, wearing face masks, hand washing, a protective genetic trait, and a relative immunity conferred by the mandatory tuberculosis vaccine.

United States

As of November 2020, there were more than 12,200,000 confirmed cases and 256,000 COVID-19-related deaths in the US, representing nearly one-fifth of the world’s known COVID-19 cases and deaths, and the most cases and deaths in any country. The cases by Nov 28 soared to 1,28,27,533 while the death toll reached to 251,268 in the country.

The first American case was reported on January 20, and President Trump declared the outbreak a public health emergency on January 31. Restrictions were placed on flights arriving from China, but the initial US response to the pandemic was otherwise slow, in terms of preparing the healthcare system, stopping other travel, and testing for the virus. Meanwhile, Trump downplayed the threat posed by the virus and claimed the outbreak was under control.

Brazil and Mexico

The World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently voiced alarm over rapid worsening of the Covid-19 situations in Brazil and Mexico, urging the countries to be “very serious” about halting the spread.

Both countries had seen both cases and deaths from the novel coronavirus surge in recent weeks as a second wave of the pandemic has hit.

Brazil has been one of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic, with more than 172,000 people killed — the second-highest number in the world, following the United States.
After a seemingly endless plateau, with more than 1,000 deaths a day from June to August, on a seven-day rolling average, the numbers had finally been falling in the nation of 212 million people.

Case numbers had also effectively doubled over the same period, with Brazil facing 218,000 cases in a week.
President Jair Bolsonaro, who has downplayed the pandemic since the outset like President Trump and some other leaders across the globe, has also dismissed talk of a second wave as “gossip”.

The 65-year-old far-right leader, who has himself had Covid-19, argues the economic impact of lockdown measures are worse than the virus itself, and has also said he would not take a vaccine when one becomes available.

Mexico meanwhile saw its total death toll pass 100,000 on November 20 and has added more than five thousand deaths since then. Over the weekend, for the first time, it counted more than 12,000 cases in a single day.

Conspiracy Theories

THE VIRUS WAS ENGINEERED IN A LABORATORY IN CHINA

The conspiracy theorists including US President Donald Trump and others claimed that it started in a lab in China, because the virus first emerged in Chinese city Wuhan and some of them believe it was engineered as a bioweapon.Despite the President’s allegations, US intelligence agencies denied the possibility that the virus was engineered in a lab, stating that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified. In response to calls for an independent, international investigation into how the virus originated, China invited researchers from the World Health Organization to discuss the scope of such an inquiry.

In counter claims a Chinese official said, the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, was introduced to China when 300 US military members arrived in the Wuhan region for the Military World Games in mid-October and infected the local population.

On March 12, Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs took to Twitter to ask, “When did patient zero begin in the US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be the US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! The US owes us an explanation!”

COVID-19 IS NO WORSE THAN THE FLU

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Trump and others lied about the disease’s severity, saying it is no more dangerous than seasonal flu. Trump later admitted to a journalist in recorded interviews in February and late March that he knew COVID-19 was more deadly than the flu and that he wanted to play down its severity.

YOU DON’T NEED TO WEAR A MASK

Despite a strong consensus among public health authorities that masks limit transmission of coronavirus, many people (the US President included) refused to wear it. Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp went so far as to sign an executive order banning city governments from implementing mask precaution.

WEALTHY ELITES ARE USING THE VIRUS TO PROFIT FROM VACCINES

In a book and in the conspiracy theory film Plandemic, Judy Mikovits, who once published a high-profile but eventually retracted study on chronic fatigue syndrome, makes the unsubstantiated claim that National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates could be using their power to profit from a COVID-19 vaccine. She also asserts without evidence that the virus came from a lab and that wearing masks “activates your own virus.” The video was viewed more than eight million times on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram before it was taken down.

HERD IMMUNITY WILL PROTECT US IF WE LET THE VIRUS SPREAD

Early on in the pandemic, some speculated that the UK and Sweden were planning to let the coronavirus circulate through their populations until they reached herd immunity—the point at which enough people are immune to the virus that it can no longer spread. Experts estimate that roughly 60 to 70 percent of people would need to get COVID-19 for herd immunity to be possible. Given the high mortality rate of the disease, letting it infect that many people could lead to millions of deaths. That tragedy is what happened during the 1918 influenza pandemic, in which at least 50 million people are thought to have perished.

The Race for Vaccine

The global race to produce a Covid-19 vaccine has reached to its climax as Oxford University-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-Novavax, Moderna, Russia’s Sputnik V, and Chinese Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines have reached in the phase to be used for broader public vaccination.

The UK became the first country to approve Covid-19 vaccine of Pfizer and Novavax. The first injections took place from December 7.The UK has ordered 40m doses of the two-shot product, which preliminary data found to be more than 95 per cent effective in preventing disease. The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency authorised the vaccine in case of urgent public need.

The same process could be applied to the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. The UK government wrote to the regulator at the end of November, asking it to review the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine. The UK government announced that it had formally referred the candidate vaccine to the UK’s medicines regulator for assessment.

The US Food and Drug Administration has also authorised the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for emergency use on Friday. The agency said the authorisation was a “significant milestone” in the pandemic, which taken more than 295,000 lives in the US.The vaccine, which offers up to 95% protection against Covid-19, was deemed safe and effective by the FDA.

AstraZeneca has promised to supply hundreds of millions of doses to low and middle income countries and to deliver the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis to those nations in perpetuity. The vaccine developed at England’s Oxford University is significantly cheaper than the others and, crucially, it would be far easier to transport and distribute in developing countries than its most of other rivals since it does not need to be stored at freezing temperatures.

China appears to have made huge strides in the race for vaccine production, with one of its front-runners, Sinovac, already making its way abroad. Shipments of Beijing-based biopharmaceutical company Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine CoronaVac have reached Indonesia in preparation for a mass vaccination campaign, with another 1.8m doses due to arrive by January.

Pfizer-Novavax vaccine needs to be stored at -70C, while Moderna’s vaccine requires to be stored at -20C. In comparison both Sinovac and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are a lot more useful to developing countries, which might not be able to store large amounts of vaccine at such low temperatures.

Another COVID-19 vaccine made in China, has outstanding efficacy data, according to a statement issued by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has been testing it in a study involving 31,000 people. UAE said that based on an interim analysis of data from that trial, it would formally register, or approve, the vaccine for widespread use. This is the fifth COVID-19 vaccine to show signs of working.

Moreover, AstraZeneca will start clinical trials to test a combination of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine with Russia’s Sputnik V shot aimed at boosting the efficacy of the British drugmaker’s vaccine, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund said on Friday.

Trials will start by the end of the year and Russia wants to jointly produce the new vaccine if it is proven to be effective, said the RDIF wealth fund, which has funded Sputnik V, named after the Soviet-era satellite that triggered the space race.

AstraZeneca, in a statement, said it was considering how it could assess combinations of different vaccines, and would soon begin exploring with Russia’s Gamaleya Institute, which developed Sputnik V, whether two common cold virus-based vaccines could be successfully combined. Its Russian arm said it would start to enrol adults aged 18 years and older to the trial.

The co-operation between one of Britain’s most valuable listed companies and the state-backed Russian science research institute highlights the pressure to develop an effective shot to fight the pandemic that has killed over 1.5 million people.

Sputnik V developers say clinical trials have shown the vaccine has an efficacy rate of over 90%, higher than AstraZeneca’s own vaccine and similar to U.S. rivals Pfizer and Moderna.

Some countries are preparing for approval of a vaccine and launching a mass vaccination drive to overcome the raging virus, while others are waiting for their turn to get vaccine shots available for vulnerable segments of the population and pool resources to initiate large scale vaccination drives.

It is yet to be seen whether the vaccines that have achieved good results in clinical trials could prove as useful on the ground to wipe out COVID-19 that has changed normal life across the world so radically. OR the mankind would have to adjust to the restrictions and learn to live alongside the disease.