Omicron has revealed a world still underprepared
Around this time two years ago, the first reports surfaced of a worrying respiratory virus in Wuhan, China. The world has since developed effective vaccines against coronavirus, and governments have a long playlist of measures to suppress outbreaks. Yet many are groping to respond to the galloping Omicron variant in ways that recall the pandemic’s earliest days. Some countries with spiralling cases have gone rapidly into lockdown while others are locked in indecision. The latest twist in the Covid saga has exposed, once again, a disturbing underpreparedness.
Omicron did not, after all, come out of the blue; scientists had long feared a vaccine-resistant strain. One unexpected feature, though, was the size of the evolutionary jump — possibly after multiple mutations in a single immunocompromised individual. Some 50 alterations have enabled it both to evade existing vaccine protection and spread with unprecedented speed.
A second problem is that Omicron is proliferating far faster than data are clarifying the seriousness of the illness it causes and the effectiveness of vaccines to guard against hospitalisations. Governments again face an unenviable choice: lock down early to save healthcare systems but risk needless economic harm if this proves an overreaction, or wait for firm data and risk much higher cases and, possibly, deaths.
Politics, too, are more of a factor than two years ago. Authoritarian governments, such as China, can still impose stringent measures with limited fears of a backlash. Democratic governments are constrained by the extent to which they have maintained trust. Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, has managed to take the Netherlands back into a strict nationwide lockdown — the first in the EU in response to Omicron — despite a domestic scandal early this year and spending months in post-election coalition talks.
Britain’s Boris Johnson, by contrast, has been left badly weakened by scandals over sleaze and Downing Street parties held during lockdown last year. He seems unable to secure enough support from his MPs to pass tougher pre-Christmas measures in England — or to be sure citizens would comply. The prime minister has not ruled out new controls after Christmas. But these risk, once again, being too late.
Even scientists are finding themselves being dragged into politics — aware they risk censure from future public inquiries or more immediately from the press for perceived missteps. England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty was accused — quite wrongly — of going beyond his remit and government policy by some Tory MPs, media and hospitality bosses after he advised the public to prioritise holiday social events that “really matter to them”.
Dangerously, there are still serious failings of international co-ordination and co-operation. Governments are still not anticipating events, acting early enough, or working together on “anywhere near the scale” required, as Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, says. Rapid identification of Omicron by South Africa bought other countries some time, but the response in terms of travel bans and quarantines has again been a mishmash.
Above all, Omicron has delivered a further reminder of the need to produce and share, much more widely, vaccines and emerging treatments. Billions of still unvaccinated people, notably in the developing world, provide a pool of infection from which further mutations can emerge. Even in richer countries, there are enough unjabbed citizens that new surges still put hospital capacity under threat. Two years on, the biggest lesson really is that no one is safe until everyone is safe.