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While New Zealand has been declared coronavirus-free, many countries are yet to experience the virus to its full extent. Oliver Lamb identifies the rapidly-increasing death toll in India, while exploring why the US state of Georgia is anomalous, seemingly avoiding a a rise in cases. This article explains that the economic impacts of COVID-19 will be widespread, but of varying severity, as some minors' safety, education, and lives could be jeopardised, if they are given no choice but to work.
“Today there are no active cases in New Zealand.” Prime minister Jacinda Ardern made the remarkable announcement at a press conference on Monday. The small island nation has recorded 1504 cases of coronavirus and a mere 22 deaths*; neither number has risen since May. Because of this, the government was able at midnight on Monday to bring one of the world’s earliest and strictest lockdowns to an end. The one request made of New Zealanders from now on will be to keep track of their movements to assist future contact-tracing.
For much of the rest of the world, however, the pandemic is accelerating. At the start of Saturday 6 June, global confirmed cases stood at 6,839,000 with 397,000 deaths. Seven days later those numbers had risen to 7,726,000 and 427,000. The true figures are bound to be far higher.*
New Zealand may have eliminated the virus, but other countries who locked down early – those in Asia, Africa and South America – have not been so lucky. Poorer to start with and with little in the way of an economic safety net, they have struggled to enforce and sustain their lockdowns. They are now registering more than half of global new cases and deaths. In India, patients are being turned away from hospitals; gravediggers can barely catch a wink of sleep; as morgues overflow, one video shows plastic-wrapped corpses left to lie alongside patients in a COVID-19 ward. Experts say India is yet to reach the peak of its outbreak.
North American and European countries are past the peaks of their outbreaks, but, unlike New Zealand, which flattened the curve early, most have been unable so far to eliminate the virus. That makes them vulnerable to a second wave. 22 US states, including Arizona, California, Texas and Florida have all recently reported a rise – although not a surge – in cases. It is unclear whether this is linked to the easing of lockdowns in May, and experts have been baffled by the fact that Georgia, the first state to resume economic activity, has not seen a spike in infections. Alternative explanations are myriad: a rise in testing, a drop in adherence to social distancing, or simply that most of the new cases are in areas which largely escaped the worst of the outbreak first time round. Many fear that the recent riots and protests will lead to a resurgence of the virus.
The economic toll of lockdowns on Western economies was foreshadowed on Friday as the UK revealed that its gross domestic product had shrunk by 20.4% in April. That is ten times the largest pre-pandemic monthly fall; to find a remotely comparable decline one has to go back more than three hundred years. It brings the drop in GDP since February to around a quarter. Prime minister Boris Johnson insists the economy will “bounce back” and economists believe the recovery has already started, but the road ahead looks long and difficult.
Crucial to the recovery will be the public response to the reopening of shops and services. If people are unpersuaded that it is safe to buy and dine again, rapid growth will be hard to come by. Even if they are willing to resume some semblance of pre-COVID normality, a shrunken economy will mean less disposable income, and thus less money being spent. Add to this the social distancing guidelines that will prevent shops and restaurants from operating at full capacity and you have the recipe for a slower recovery than politicians would have us believe.
The International Labour Organisation and UNICEF warned on Friday that the economic impact of the pandemic in developing countries may force millions of desperate families to send their children to work. 94 million youngsters have escaped child labour in the last twenty years, and that progress is now at risk. In addition, children already working may face longer hours and poorer conditions.
The United Nations has previously warned that millions of children may die in the coming years because of disruption to vaccination programmes. By early June, at least 68 nations had been affected by strain on healthcare services and supply problems, and some have suspended vaccinations completely. Already an estimated 80 million babies have missed vaccinations. Experts say that diseases like measles, cholera, polio, diphtheria and yellow fever may make a comeback.
It is a reminder that the fight against infectious diseases is a continuous one and that the triumphs of modern medicine are fragile. Jacinda Ardern spoke about coronavirus at her briefing on Monday, but she could have been speaking about any of humankind’s historic ailments when she said that “elimination is not a point in time, it is a sustained effort.”
*statistics taken from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
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