Asian-Pacific countries, lagging in jabs, still rely on supression tactics

The Countries Stuck in Coronavirus Purgatory Much of Asia cannot (or will not) yet get jabbed, so the region is still having to rely on suppression tactics. Timothy McLaughlin The Atlantic

... Remarkably, Hong Kong’s mandatory-quarantine period remains in place even for people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. It is one of the onerous, expensive, and often confusing regulations that the authorities have insisted on keeping, despite having done well managing the pandemic. Like mainland China and other parts of Asia, Hong Kong adopted a “zero COVID” approach when the coronavirus began spreading last year. Coupled with a strong response from city residents, many of whom remember the SARS outbreak of 2003, the outcome has been largely positive from a public-health standpoint: The city of some 7.5 million has logged fewer than 12,000 cases and exactly 210 deaths. It has been nearly 50 days since someone has died from the virus.

Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, and mainland China, as well as Australia and New Zealand, were also adherents to the “zero COVID” or “elimination” strategy, which called for getting daily new cases close to zero, then keeping the number extremely low by quarantining arrivals, conducting extensive testing, and intermittently requiring strict social distancing, thereby allowing them to maintain a sense of normalcy.

These efforts saved them from the devastation seen in places such as the United States and Europe, where health-care systems neared collapse and hundreds of thousands died. In a recent article published in The Lancet, researchers found that not only were there fewer deaths in countries that opted for elimination, but “evidence suggests that countries that opt for rapid action to eliminate SARS-CoV-2—with the strong support of their inhabitants—also better protect their economies and minimise restrictions on civil liberties compared with those that strive for mitigation.”

Now, though, some of these early success stories are struggling to procure and deploy vaccines that would allow their residents to reengage with the world, even as other countries battered by the coronavirus push ahead with vaccinations and return to a semblance of pre-pandemic life. Eliminating COVID-19 was the “optimal strategy in the short term,”

Ben Cowling, the head of the epidemiology and biostatistics department at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health, told me. The transition to a more sustainable approach has, however, proved to be challenging, he said. “Herd immunity through vaccination is the safest way out of the pandemic and back to normal life.”

Across the region, countries have adopted a series of prolonged and harsh measures to keep the virus at bay. Authorities have deployed extended border closures, ambush-style lockdowns, forced testing, and massive quarantine operations, as well as fines, jail time, and cancellation of work permits for rule breakers. The results have been positive, but are proving difficult to sustain, particularly as many of these countries struggle to deploy wide-reaching vaccination drives. ...

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