A year and a half since the first Covid-19 cases were identified, many countries in Asia-Pacific feel right back where they started.
While Britons hit the nightclubs after a long winter of coronavirus restrictions, millions of people in Australia and China are back in lockdown. Health systems in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are overwhelmed. And countries like the Pacific island nation of Fiji, which last year had only reported a handful of cases, are now battling major outbreaks.To some, it's hard to understand why Asia-Pacific is being hit so hard.
As of Sunday, just 17% of Australia's population of 25 million people have been fully vaccinated -- well below the UK's 58% or 50% in the US -- meaning there is little immunity in the community to stop Delta's spread. " was a huge mistake," said Alexandra Martiniuk, a professor at the University of Sydney school of public health."So we are stuck in this position where there's very few people vaccinated and a very dangerous variant.
Wuhan takes drastic action to stop Delta outbreak. See what city looks like 03:25Longer term, though, many experts think a zero Covid strategy isn't sustainable. Eventually, all countries will want to open up to the world again -- and when they do, they may need to accept that some people would likely get ill, a hard shift in Asia-Pacific countries used to keeping the virus out altogether.
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