Explained: What to make of Covid-19 resurgence in China, Hong Kong and elsewhere

The resurgence

China, where the pandemic originated in December 2019, was the first one to gain near complete control over the outbreak. At least, that was what the data being reported from the country suggested. New cases had all but stopped, after the country had reported the first 85,000 infections by April 2020. In a country of 1.4 billion people, the daily count of cases remained mostly in double digits through most of the last two years.

But things have changed drastically in the last three weeks. The daily case count has been consistently in three digits since February 18, according to the website Our World in Data, and has now entered the thousands. In the last ten days, the country has reported a daily average of nearly 700 new cases. There hasn’t been any corresponding increase in Covid-19 deaths, though. China has continued to report zero deaths for several months now.

That is not the situation in Hong Kong, however. Hong Kong has been experiencing a massive wave of new infections, and also seeing a number of deaths. There have been over 3,500 Covid-related deaths in Hong Kong in just this month. In a country that had been reporting cases only in single digits until December, hospitals are now overcrowded and patients are unable to find beds, or critical healthcare support.

But these are not the only two. Most countries in central and western Europe are reporting large number of Covid-19 cases, and some, like Germany, in lakhs every day. Even the United States is averaging over 25,000 new cases every day.

Source: Our World in Data

No new variant

Unlike the other major waves, the current resurgence is not triggered by the emergence of any new fast-transmitting variant of the virus. At least, none has been identified so far. In most of the countries reporting high numbers, it is the Omicron variant that is spreading. In Hong Kong and China, the Omicron wave seems to have hit a few months late compared to the rest of the world. In Europe and the United States, the Omicron wave has remained far more persistent than it has in India, for example. The decline has been much slower and unsteady.

The cases of China and Hong Kong stand out mainly because, unlike Europe or the United States and much of the rest of the world, these two regions never really witnessed the kind of surge they are experiencing now. Most other countries, on the other hand, have seen multiple waves. It is not clear what finally enabled the Omicron variant to break through the defences in Hong Kong and then in China.

Relaxations in restrictions

The refusal of Covid-19 to fade away in the United States and Europe could be attributed, at least in part, to the steady relaxation in restrictions, and normalisation of routine interactions. In most of these countries, normal life is almost back to pre-pandemic levels. But the situation in India is not very different. And here, the decline of the third wave has been remarkably swift.

The other possible reason could be the waning effectiveness of the vaccines. Europe and the United States vaccinated their populations far earlier than India, and the coverage of the booster doses has not been as universal as the original dosages. This could be true for China and Hong Kong as well. China has been the leader in vaccinating its people, having started as early as June 2020. But the percentage of people taking the booster doses has been much lower.

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