For the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, people working in the infectious diseases and global health spheres were largely focused on the new disease. In 2022, however, gears shifted.
Covid didn’t go away, but diseases like flu that had been held in abeyance by the new virus and the measures we used to slow its spread — well, they’re baaack. From late summer onward in the United States, hospitals have been packed with people sick with one respiratory illness or another.
As the third year of the Covid pandemic ends and 2023 begins, what can be spotted on the horizon? We already know about a bunch of things that are going to jostle for our attention; rest assured others we’re not anticipating will materialize as well.
We’ll report on them when they do. But let’s talk about three issues we can see right now.
Covid in China
The country from whence the pandemic virus emerged is finally dealing with Covid the disease.
The country’s zero-Covid policy has kept cases and deaths to extraordinarily low levels as the SARS-CoV-2 virus has sickened and killed people in other parts of the world over the past three years. But the people of China are tired of being literally locked into their homes and in late 2022 took to the streets in unprecedented demonstrations across the country. The shaken government of Xi Jinping has been loosening Covid restrictions. The move is overdue, but exiting a zero-Covid strategy requires careful planning and execution and it’s clear China hasn’t done the necessary preparatory work.
And in less than three weeks, right around the third anniversary of the original lockdown in Wuhan, China will celebrate the lunar new year, its most important holiday and one in which there are family gatherings and mass movement within the country.
This could get very ugly.
Too few of China’s oldest citizens have had Covid vaccine boosters, and some of those who have been boosted got their latest jab months and months ago. Easing measures aimed at blocking Covid transmission in an undervaccinated, vulnerable population is leading to transmission at a rate the country has not yet experienced. Its health care system — like all the others that faced unfettered Covid transmission — will struggle to meet the demand.