Daily Times

With global coronavirus cases crossing the important 200 million barrier and the Delta variant “spreading at the speed of light”, as authorities in Australia described it when justifying their latest string of lockdowns, it is now clear that hopes of the international vaccination drive bringing the pandemic to an end by the end of the year were overblown. We are now in that part of this particular cycle where leaders fret about both the health and safety implications of the fast mutating virus and also its impact on economic recovery all around the world. For at least twice every week global markets fall because of yet more troubling news from the virus, making so much money from the stimulus packages and expansionary measures go waste.

The vaccination efforts in different parts of the world are stories in themselves. Some vaccines are accepted in some countries and not in others, while other vaccines have suddenly been found to be a lot less effective than thought all this time. And then there is also a very glaring difference in the way some countries treat cases from other countries. The UK, for example, created fresh controversy just the other day by downgrading the threat level from India to amber, which means passengers from the latter can now travel to the former, while maintaining Pakistan in the red list even though our positivity rate is a lot less than India’s. This way some governments are not just unnecessarily politicising a very sensitive issue, they are also letting such concerns put their own citizens in grave danger by exposing them to new strains of the virus. It was precisely the decision to allow Indians to travel to the UK for far longer than others that led to the Delta variant spreading so fast there. Yet it doesn’t seem as if London learnt any lasting lessons.

The Delta variant has now caused enough damage for a number of countries to go back to harsh lockdowns, despite the economic downside of such decisions. There’s been some controversy about this in Pakistan as well as the Sindh and central governments disagreed about the right kind of lockdown to counter the kind of devastation caused by the Delta wave. So far Pakistan has braved all waves better than much of the rest of the world but there are signs that the immediate future might not bring as many pleasant surprises as the recent past. And considering the way the Delta wave is spreading, we will have to be very vigilant lest all the gains are squandered. *