October 14, 2024

covid pandemic

COVID hasn’t gone away

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Now in its fifth year, COVID continues to have negative effects on individuals, health services and society at large. In May 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID was no longer a public health emergency of international concern.

For many, this signalled the pandemic was over. But the virus continues to infect millions of people, and the WHO recognises COVID as an ongoing pandemic.

In Australia, more than 50,000 infections have been reported in the first months of 2024. This is likely to be a significant underestimate, as we are testing much less than we used to.

In New South Wales, for example, laboratory-confirmed cases are trending downwards, while wastewater testing suggests COVID prevalence remains high.

As of 1 February, there were 287 outbreaks in residential aged care homes and people are still dying from the virus. Several nursing and other health academics, writing in the online journal The Conversation, argue that reinstating easy access to rapid antigen and PCR testing would enable people to better manage their illness, and provide a clearer picture for health authorities.

As Board members of the Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control, they call for “ongoing infection prevention and control strategies in Australia.

These include supporting people to access vaccination and testing, and cleaner air in shared indoor spaces.” Currently there is no Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) recommendation that people at greater occupational risk of catching COVID, such as healthcare workers, childcare workers or emergency and essential services workers, receive another vaccination at this stage.

The ‘common good’ is key in dealing with the next pandemic

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Unlocking the full potential of health technologies developed in response to COVID-19 requires equitable access, says WHO.

COVID-19 showed that we have the scientific and manufacturing capabilities to develop and mass-produce safe and effective vaccines quickly in the face of novel threats, said Mariana Mazzucato, Chair of WHO’s Council on the Economics of Health for All.

“But though this scientific breakthrough saved countless lives during the last pandemic, the benefits were not equitably shared. One year after the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, approximately 73 per cent of administered doses were concentrated in high- and upper-middle-income countries, whereas only 0.9 per cent had reached low-income countries.

“This disparity was even more pronounced for mRNA vaccines, which were primarily used in wealthy countries that initially hoarded supplies. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies maintained tight control over licensing and production, allowing them to reap eye-watering profits.”

Stricter governance over these pharmaceutical giants matters, she said.

Both the Oxford–AstraZeneca and Pfizer–BioNTech (mRNA) vaccines received considerable public funding – $445 million for BioNTech and $1.3 billion to Oxford–AstraZeneca – and both benefited from large advance-purchase commitments.

“While public funding for production of Oxford–AstraZeneca’s vaccine was conditioned on the company setting lower prices in the interest of accessibility, Pfizer–BioNTech was permitted to set higher prices, and then rebuffed calls for it to offer licensing agreements and technology transfers.

“Next time, governments must ensure that contract provisions reflect the common good and regulate excess profit-taking.”

COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency: WHO

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The emergency is over but the world must remain vigilant, says global body.

The WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced in May that the UN health agency was downgrading COVID’s alert status that had been in place since 30 January 2020, The Guardian reported.

But he warned that COVID remained a persistent threat with the disease still killing someone every three minutes.

Tedros said the decision to downgrade the alert status did not mean the danger was over, cautioning that the emergency status could be reinstated if the situation changed. He pointed out that long COVID impacted one in 10 people who had contracted the virus and hundreds of millions of people could still need long-term care.

“The worst thing any country could do now is to use this news as a reason to let down its guard, to dismantle the systems it has built, or to send the message to its people that COVID -19 is nothing to worry about,” he said.

COVID has officially claimed more than 6.9 million lives, and affected the health of more than 765 million others, according to WHO. It said the true figures were likely to be much higher and an ongoing commitment to public health was essential.

“It is critical for governments to invest long-term in their health system and workers,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“It is critical for governments to invest long-term in their health system and workers.” —  WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

The silver lining in COVID: solidarity

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World Happiness Report finds higher levels of benevolence in all global regions than before the pandemic.
Interviews with more than 100,000 people across 137 countries found significantly higher levels of benevolence in all global regions than before the pandemic, The Guardian reported.

Things were slightly worse in Western countries and slightly better in the rest of the world, but overall “the undoubted pains were offset by increases in the extent to which respondents had been able to discover and share the capacity to care for each other in difficult times,” the 10th World Happiness Report found.

“It’s amazing,” said John Helliwell, a professor of economics at the University of British Columbia and a co-editor of the report.

“People ended up discovering their neighbours. People were checking in more regularly [with other generations], so that sense of isolation was not as much as you would expect.”

Acts of everyday kindness that have been shown to boost happiness, such as helping a stranger, donating to charity and volunteering – activities spurred by the needs of lockdowns – are now above pre-pandemic levels.
The study found the happiness effect of “having someone to count on in times of trouble” increased during the pandemic and since 80 per cent of people surveyed said they did have someone to count on, that had a significant effect.
The study found the happiness effect of ‘having someone to count on in times of trouble’ increased during the pandemic.

India’s health calamity and economic catastrophe

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Nearly 80 per cent of the estimated 70 million people around the world who fell into extreme poverty at the onset of COVID-19 in 2020 were from India, a recent World Bank report has revealed.

Renowned Indian economist Jayati Ghosh  said COVID was “undoubtedly India’s worst health calamity in at least a century”.

But she  said the pandemic’s consequences go beyond the direct effects on health and mortality.

“There were very significant policy failures – owing to government action and inaction – that were responsible for widespread and significant damage to Indian livelihoods and for the country’s decline in terms of many basic indicators of economic well-being,” she wrote in the online journal Project Syndicate.

She  said that while the country already suffered from glaring inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunities long before COVID-19, the government’s pandemic response has taken them to “unimaginable extremes”.

“Even as Indian workers faced poverty, hunger, and ever-greater material insecurity due to the pandemic, money and resources continued to flow from the poor and the middle class to the country’s largest corporations and wealthiest individuals.

“At the heart of India’s self-inflicted economic catastrophe is the government’s decision to provide very little compensation or social protection, even as COVID-19 lockdowns deprived hundreds of millions of their livelihoods for several months.”

Mental health is forgotten in this pandemic 

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The NSW Government has announced funding for small businesses and rebates to NSW households with school-aged children; however, it has failed to invest in our public health system by not implementing safe patient ratios.

Our mental health system has always struggled but it’s been especially felt during this pandemic. Mental health nurses have struggled through the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and have experienced the same issues as our nursing colleagues in the general hospital public health system.

NSW Mental Health units have reconfigured units to support the admissions of mental health patients with COVID-19, and we continue to have outbreaks within these environments. It’s been quite challenging given the age of some of our inpatient units, which lack respiratory isolation rooms, firmly closed doors, and have poorly ventilated wards and shared patient rooms. Compounding this is the issue of lack of resources available to care for any patient with airborne illness.

Mental health nurses, while highly experienced in caring for a patient with mental health issues, have limited knowledge about caring for patients with complex medical and physical conditions. When staffing is under-resourced, it becomes difficult to deliver safe, quality care.

Staffing has remained under-resourced in mental health units for years; however, this pandemic has immensely exacerbated this issue. Excessive overtime and unfilled shifts leave a trail of exhausted and burnt-out nursing staff, and an overwhelmed system that simply cannot provide safe and adequate patient care.

It’s time for this government to invest in the public health system and implement safe staffing ratios.

Francesca Cavallaro, EN

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