Message from the Publisher #31 – A backflip around the world

A backflip around the world

Yes, vaccines are starting to go into the western world while in Australia, we are still in an early stage of our vaccination program. It is a time to examine how vaccination will affect the world.

At this moment, Israel (60.68%), UK (45.88%), Chile (36.24%), Bahrain (30.02%), and the USA (29.77%) are the top five countries with the greatest proportion of population received vaccination. From the trend of emerging of new cases, the effect of the vaccine in Israel, the UK and the USA is obvious in seeing a clear drop of new cases following the rollout of the vaccination program. Unfortunately, Chile and Bahrain are still experiencing an increase and maintaining a high number of new cases occurrence. Chile and Bahrain are mainly using the vaccines developed in China. This causes concerns about the efficacy of the concerning vaccines.

Around the world, recently we are now observing an increase of newly infected cases in countries like India, Brazil and some European countries even with steady progress with a vaccination program in these countries. Yes, the proportion of the population that received vaccines are still small and protection may not be obvious. Experts are telling that lockdown protocol fatigue in most countries with long time isolation and use of masks in daily lives followed by a decline in new cases and confidence of vaccination program will lead to a slackening of people which in turn will lead to a new rise of cases.

Mutations of the virus may be another concern by medical experts but at this moment little is known. The urban mobility of cities with big populations in India and others may cause a resurgence of cases when people are no longer guarding themselves with mixed messages from the government that the world is going back to normal with vaccination rollout.

In Australia, we are fortunate that we have built up a fast contact tracing system and an effective quarantine program. It seems that we must improve our vaccination protocols and speed up our vaccination rates so that Australia can become normal again.

The government should give more guidance on how society will go back to normal with the Covid-19 virus co-exists with us.

Raymond Chow

Publisher, BlessingCALD