This week we continue with Covid19 by looking at its effects around the world. Covid19 has become the great mystery of our times. Why for instance here in the Northeast, home of Case Medical, are we seeing a rise in cases? It’s uncertain if it’s the beginning of a larger surge. William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard, said “There’s definitely something coming, but depending on all the moving parts it might be a ripple relative to previous waves.”

Experts believe an increase in hospitalizations should have started showing up in at least some places based on how other surges have played out, but so far, recorded cases are only up slightly. “This is something of a head scratcher,” said Robert Wachter, chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco. He goes on to speculate that perhaps the relationship between cases and hospitalizations may not be holding, which would be very good news for us all. Support for this possible good news is in the data which shows that hospitalizations are relatively low in most Northeastern states, and deaths are actually down.

The new White House Covid-19 response coordinator, Dr. Ashish K. Jha, said Monday that while there has been a recent uptick in new U.S. coronavirus cases, he was not overly concerned. “We’ve got to watch this very carefully — obviously, I never like to see infections rising — I think we’ve got to be careful,” Further, Dr. Jha said “… I don’t think this is a moment where we have to be excessively concerned.” Yet, in Washington DC, people close to President Joe Biden have contracted Covid as the virus spreads among some of the capital's most powerful figures after attending the high-profile Gridiron Dinner.

China on the other hand has for more than two years held to some of the world’s toughest quarantine restrictions, in its unswerving pursuit of “zero Covid.” Recently residents of Shanghai, a city of 25 million people have been under a lockdown that began on April 1 because of a surge in Omicron coronavirus cases. In fact, there are daily curfews and food rations are being distributed to avoid crowds and close contact. This is in sharp contrast to the approach in much of the world, where most nations have abandoned pandemic precautions and are hoping vaccination rates will limit the severity of future outbreaks.

Reaction to Covid19 outbreaks run the gamut, from testing sewage to find possible Covid outbreaks, as in Colorado which has moved toward statewide coverage of wastewater testing to track the coronavirus, a public heath intervention that can give early warning of outbreaks. While, Philadelphia has become the first major U.S. city to reimpose an indoor mask mandate. City officials said the city has reached the Level 2: Mask Precautions stage of its four-tiered COVID-19 response system, and that it will reimpose mask mandates on April 18.

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