From Hong Kong to Australia, the Delta mutation is exposing the vulnerabilities of economies once considered Asia’s anti-Covid-19 strongholds.
Experiences from countries with high vaccination rates such as the UK and Israel, where the number of deaths due to the Delta variant is low despite the number of infections increasing, open up hope for Asia-Pacific countries on how to live together.
Australia has locked down four major cities, including Sydney, Darwin, Perth and Brisbane, after an outbreak of Delta strain infections.
The Delta variant, first discovered in India and has spread to more than 90 countries, is believed to be about 50% more infectious than the original virus strain.
`We need to act decisively and quickly,` said Annastacia Palaszczuk, premier of Queensland, where Brisbane is located.
People lined up waiting to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in Sydney, Australia on June 23.
Less than 6% of Australians have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, making it one of the lowest vaccination rates in developed countries.
Although considered an effective way to prevent epidemics, border closures across Asia-Pacific also cause heavy socio-economic damage.
Peter Collignon, an infectious disease expert at the Australian National University Medical School, said he hopes the spread of the Delta variant will help boost vaccinations in the country, where about a third of people are over 70 years old.
`The only benefit of the blockade is to make people no longer complacent and increase vaccination rates,` Collignon said.
In Hong Kong, where less than 20% of the population has been fully vaccinated, of which about 5% are people over 70 years old, authorities on June 28 banned all flights from the UK, when the Delta variant accounted for 99% of cases.
New Zealand, a country that has fully vaccinated less than 10% of its population, last week stopped its `travel bubble` with Australia.
Michael Baker, a professor of public health at the University of Otago in Wellington, said while New Zealand’s current approach was effective, authorities could not take vaccination lightly.
Although more susceptible and resistant to vaccines than other strains, Delta’s trajectory in countries with high vaccination rates suggests that this variant mostly threatens unvaccinated people.
Peter Horby, head of the British government’s New Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, said over the weekend that vaccines make the link between infection and death `much weaker`, although it has not yet been established.
New British Health Minister Sajid Javid said on June 28 that `freedom day` will take place as planned in July, and emphasized that the UK must `learn to live with the virus`.
A crowded restaurant in London, England.
In Israel, where the number of infections has increased more than tenfold in the past two weeks despite nearly 60% of the population being fully vaccinated, health officials have reported only one or a few deaths a day in the last week.
In addition to re-imposing mandatory mask wearing in indoor spaces and increasing quarantine, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett rejected the idea of strengthening new restrictions, pledging `vaccination instead of blockade.`
Vally, an epidemiologist at la Trobe University, said the rapid spread of the variant was a reminder for Australia that there was `a very long way to go` before we could let down our guard.
`We have a lot of work to do to vaccinate people and reach an immunity level that reduces the risk of Covid-19 for the entire population,` he said.
Collignon said he hopes Australia can escape the ongoing lockdown in the second half of this year, when millions of doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines become available.
`I see that we just need to do it for another four to five months, then we will have a lot of people with immunity and be able to take a completely different approach,` he said.