'Surveillance and reporting of the virus’s movements are starting to slow just at a time when a highly infectious subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, is spilling out across the world... These cutbacks are not based on evidence'
The WHO’s COVID technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove , says it’s crucial that surveillance systems “are not taken apart”.From the way political leaders in many high-income nations are talking and acting, it would be easy to think that the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer worth keeping track of.
These cutbacks are not based on evidence. They are political, and they could have disastrous consequences for the world. Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for COVID-19 at the World Health Organization , says it’s crucial that “the systems that have been put in place for surveillance, for testing, for sequencing right now be reinforced, that they are not taken apart”.
The UK government’s COVID-19 tracking dashboard, one of the world’s most comprehensive, is stopping its weekend updates of infections, mortality, hospitalizations and vaccinations, lumping Saturday and Sunday figures into Monday’s. Prime Minister Boris Johnson says this is part of plans to “live with COVID”.
The downward trend in reporting is subtle, but it mirrors other signs of complacency about COVID-19. The United Kingdom, for example, will no longer provide diagnostic tests free of cost. Several of its data-collection programmes are also ending. REACT-1, a long-running random-testing study, will lose its government funding at the end of this month. And ZOE, a mobile app that residents can use to log their COVID-19 symptoms, has lost its public funding, too.
The United States and United Kingdom aren’t alone. In many countries, political sentiments are shifting towards adopting a ‘new normal’. Of course, national budgets are being stretched thin as governments look to increase public expenditure on subsidizing fuel and food as the world plunges from dealing with the pandemic to tackling the global impacts of war in Ukraine. But scaling back virus surveillance at this time is short-sighted.
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