“Five million deaths from COVID-19 is a great wake-up call for all humanity” | INTERVIEW

Less than two years after a crisis began that stripped health systems across the planet and especially affected the poorest nations, the world reached the disastrous five million death toll from the coronavirus pandemic COVID-19.

Almost 2.3 million of the deaths from the pandemic occurred in the Americas, the region hardest hit by the pandemic, while 1.4 million were recorded in Europe and 693,000 in South Asia.

Globally, almost 50% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of vaccines against COVID-19, with more than 7,000 million doses administered. However, in low-income economies this percentage stands at 3.6%.

Trade He talked about the current panorama of the pandemic in the world with the former Minister of Health and an expert in global health for more than 15 years, Patricia García, who points out that the virus knows no borders and that it is the responsibility of citizens to continue taking care of themselves.

– The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has said that the milestone of five million deaths from the pandemic represents a global “failure”. What does it really mean to have reached this figure?

I totally agree, what this figure is teaching us is that in the world we still have to work to improve our health services and it also highlights how urgent it is to prepare for pandemics. Health has no borders, we share vulnerabilities and therefore we have to seek to work together to find solutions. In some aspects that has worked, in a very short time we have been able to have vaccines. But we have also seen the negative nationalism that has caused some countries to have vaccines earlier and more than they needed, while other countries, such as Peru, have had to start vaccinating later and other nations still do not even reach 20 % of vaccination because vaccines do not reach them.

I believe that this figure is a great wake-up call for all humanity, we have to understand that we are together on this same planet, we have to start thinking about how we work more in solidarity and together. This should be the alarm that allows us to wake up. The next pandemic should not catch us off guard. Our response to the pandemic has been a global failure, too many people have died, there has been too much suffering and it is not over yet because we have to see the consequences that are coming.

—And the terrible figure is almost certainly lower than the real one since not all those affected have had access to diagnostic tests and many died at home without medical attention …

Sure, these numbers scare anyone, but it is very clear that there is an underreporting. Nor can one ignore the suffering this has caused. We have had family and friends who have passed away. Also, what it means to die alone, with all the fear. There is also the suffering of isolation. It will take us several years to know the magnitude of what this has meant and will mean for the following decades, everything related to the aftermath and a series of aspects that we are going to have to understand.

It is a wake-up call, we have to make many changes not only in the health systems, but also in the inequities that exist, think about how to improve overcrowding, ventilation. The risk of pandemics exists, hopefully we will not fall asleep again. The alarm has already sounded, we have to wake up and get up, we cannot go back to sleep because that would be terrible.

– What role are vaccination campaigns playing in the current state of the pandemic?

They vary worldwide. Something that is very interesting is that the developed countries did not have a very good vaccination culture because many of the diseases had already been eliminated; This is because previous generations had already been vaccinated and sanitary conditions were better. In Latin America and Africa, given that we still have overcrowding and not so good sanitary conditions, we have managed to lower mortality by having good vaccination campaigns and people believe in vaccines.

Vaccinations are going quite well, as seen in Peru, people are going to get vaccinated, what we lacked was not the desire for vaccination, but the possibility of vaccines. On average, vaccination rates in the world are around 30% because you have countries in Africa that do not reach 5%. Peru is above the Latin American average in vaccination, which is super good, but we have to keep going up. The world should be very clear that we all need to be vaccinated in order to really lower the risk at the planet level. Not one can be left unvaccinated.

– Has vaccination been key to slowing down the number of deaths?

I believe that the fact that vaccination has advanced is being reflected in the world case curve that is also decreasing. The problem is that no pandemic ends from one moment to another, that has never happened in history. What begins to happen is that little by little the waves can decrease in intensity.

The only way in which this drop that we have now could be “permanent” is if we had between 80% and 90% of vaccination in the world and we do not have it. The risk is latent that the vaccines we have might not be enough.

What are the most urgent challenges at this point in the fight against the pandemic?

At a global level, the first thing is to ensure that the production and supply of vaccines and supplies continues. Second thing: science can’t stop. We have to keep working on the surveillance of the pandemic, knowing what happens with the virus and the variants, but we also have to keep working in the search for medicines that can work and that are available to the people.

The other big challenge is thinking about what lessons we have learned to prepare for the next pandemics. For example, there are some groups that are evaluating building regulations to improve ventilation, but there are questions about how that could become a reality in all countries. There are many things to discuss.

It is also important to see how we work to break inequities in our health systems and we have to improve them. And finally, all the social determinants. As long as we have all these overcrowding problems we will continue like this. As a health worker, I can say that we have to make people literate so that they are empowered to take care of their own health.

—And at the level of Peru?

At the country level, I believe that these great challenges are repeated, only at the local level. Vaccination has to continue, the health system has to be strengthened, we have to effectively prepare for the next pandemic, we have to involve the community and people, make them literate. We should be able to have community responses of protection, of help. In the country there is an absolute need to work with the communities. And the State has to help create effective social protection platforms, with digitization tools.

We have just finished a study analyzing how Peru had evolved in terms of life expectancy, from the 90s to 2019. In fact, we had managed to improve life expectancy in a notorious way, people live longer. With what has happened in the pandemic, we have lost 10 years and that is happening all over the world. Many, many older people have died. We must act so that this does not happen again. This time it was the old man’s turn, the next time it could be pregnant women or children.

– What do we have to keep in mind to protect ourselves and avoid continuing to add millions of deaths?

We must rethink what we are doing, otherwise there will not be five million deaths, there will be billions. We have to learn the lesson. Now we cannot lower our guard. The State has a fundamental responsibility, but also each one of us as human beings.

We have a vaccine that is effective, so we must get vaccinated. But even with the vaccine, transmission continues, this pass gives the virus an advantage because it learns, multiplies, mutates and some variant could appear that could jump the vaccine barrier. So I have to keep taking care of myself in a rational way, avoiding fears, anxiety and fears. I go out with my mask, if I don’t know people I don’t stick to them, I continue to wash my hands, I look for ventilated places and I avoid large crowds of people. Those huge parties aren’t going, and they’re not going for a while. Pandemics do not come suddenly and they do not go away.

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