COVID-19 remains a threat in 2021

THE coronavirus COVID-19 dominated developments around the world in 2020. It looks like it will continue to do so in 2021.

Just when mass vaccinations began, first in the United Kingdom (UK), followed by the United States, a new strain of the coronavirus has emerged in the UK and scientists are unsure if the new strain is more dangerous than the old one, whether it will cause more deaths and infections, whether the newly approved vaccines will have any effect on it.

And then the next question is: After new cures and new vaccines are developed for this new strain, what if still another new strain suddenly emerges? For that is the nature of viruses, they keep changing. They are all around us, many living in animals. Once in a while, they mutate into a variant that thrives in human beings. Just like COVID-19.

So, just when there was a surge of hope around the world with the development of vaccines for COVID-19 in record time, there is now this UK variant, which has caused about 50 countries, including the Philippines, to close their borders to travelers from that country.

Last Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said there is yet another new strain of the COVID-19 that has been reported in South Africa. “We are working with scientists in the UK and South Africa who are carrying out epidemiological and laboratory studies, which will guide our next steps,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

In 2020, COVID-19 infected over 80 million people around the world, killing over 1.8 million of them. The Philippines had its share of the COVID-19 pandemic — over 471,000 cases and over 9,000 deaths.

It is now 2021 and there is great hope that with the new vaccines, the COVID-19 pandemic will soon come to an end. But there are these new variants emerging in UK and South Africa. The WHO hopes that with the early discovery of these new strains, scientists will be able to quickly develop cures and vaccines for them.

The whole world must remain on alert for the COVID-19 danger is far from over, WHO chief Ghebreyesus said in its assessment of the pandemic as the year ended. All countries around the world must keep looking, and testing, and we must be ready to adjust strategies, he said.