Rabat – Politicians across the globe appear to be divided on how to deal with their national COVID-19 epidemics as cases remain high. National anti-COVID-19 strategies appear to show a wide divergence in approaches, from a “living with COVID-19” approach in the West, to a “zero-covid” approach in the East.
Despite an unprecedented peak in new cases in February, governments in Europe and North America have announced major reductions in preventative measures against the COVID-19 virus. While new daily cases have reached dizzying heights, the death toll in these, highly vaccinated, countries has remained relatively low.
Europe recorded more than 11 million new cases since the start of February, while related deaths in the same time frame topped out at 24,447. The current dominant Omicron strain of COVID-19 and high vaccination rates appears to have decoupled death rates from new infections, which has led Western politicians to lift measures despite high infection rates.
In Morocco, vaccination remains the government’s preferred solution in combination with ongoing preventative measures such as social distancing and the use of masks. Morocco’s current wave appears to have peaked in January, with 1,148 new cases detected on Friday, down from 9,061 on January 20.
Read also: Morocco’s Trade Unions Vow to Raise Awareness About Booster Shots
In China, arguably the country with the most heavy-handed approach, only three people died in the same period among 5,122 new cases detected, despite China having twice the population of Europe.
China’s “zero-covid” approach, which locks down entire cities whenever cases are detected, has likely saved thousands of lives, yet it has created economic disruptions that are felt along the global supply chain. China’s manufacturing output has been impacted by the zero-covid approach, as industries faced sudden lockdowns whenever new cases were detected near their facilities.
The WHO appears to prescribe an approach that is somewhere in between the Chinese and Western policies. While the global health institute does not argue for a return of lockdowns, it fears that relaxation of measures amid the current milder Omicron variant, could result in the virus mutating among lower-vaccinated populations and produce more lethal new variants.
During this week’s COVID-19 press briefing, the WHO’s Maria van Kerkhove highlighted that “the way that Omicron has replaced Delta around the world so quickly, the sharp peaks that we’ve seen, we literally have had to redraw the scale of the epidemic curve that we have been using and it makes the previous peaks look almost flat.”
The WHO further warns that relatively low death rates in Europe stand in contrast with global death rates. Van Kerkhove commented that “the number of deaths are increasing for the fifth week in a row, half a million people that we know about have died.”
The WHO currently appears most worried about the BA.2 mutation of the Omicron variant, which it says could hamper ongoing economic recoveries and introduce a new more deadly variant into societies where COVID-fatigue and economic priorities make it hard to reintroduce preventive measures.
Read also: Moroccan Health Expert Explains Danger of Omicron BA.2 Subvariant
