Global COVID-19 cases top 100 million

Global COVID-19 cases hurtled to 100 million on Tuesday, breaking yet another grim record, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Throughout a roller-coaster year featuring a pandemic, when waves of the virus and its faster-spreading variants are ravaging the world, however, human efforts to defeat the disease at times and in some places lagged or went wrong, like belated test results, public defiance of necessary restrictions and, more recently, unbalanced vaccine distribution.

In this life-or-death race of mankind versus virus, COVID-19 caught everyone off guard at first. However, anti-virus measures like lockdowns and calls for wearing a mask have gained increasing popularity, with the faster-than-ever work on vaccines expected to usher in an end to the pandemic.

Now that more than one in every 80 people worldwide have been infected with the coronavirus, the global community was knit together like never before with the same memory of pain and hope for normalcy. Humans have gone to great lengths to outrun the virus, and against all odds in the future, there is this overwhelming strength of a global community hand in hand.

CATCH-UP IN ANTI-VIRUS RESPONSE

After its outbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen an upward spiral. It took months for global infections to cross the ten million mark since the very first reported case, but only about two weeks to add yet another ten million from 90 million.

So far the outlook is still not rosy. A faster-spreading coronavirus variant first reported in Britain has been detected in at least 60 countries, said the World Health Organization (WHO) on Jan. 20.

Some countries have set record after record for daily increases. With over 100,000 new cases every day for weeks, the United States has set a yet unbeaten, painful global record. Understaffed hospitals have struggled with a dearth of beds. Deaths also rose, so fast that a county in Texas, for example, used temporary coolers to hold bodies.

Other parts of the world have not fared much better. Take Japan for example: Its medical system was so overwhelmed that some hospitals had to turn away patients.

Yet outside hospitals, the pandemic is causing larger-scale damage as it sent the economy into free fall. Amid lockdowns, countless businesses across the globe have filed for bankruptcy, leaving laid-off workers in the lurch. In a January report released by the World Bank, global economic output is expected to expand 4 percent in 2021 but still remain more than 5 percent below pre-pandemic projections.

There were a lot of botched responses to the virus, a virus whose origin and cure are unknown, for instance, the erroneous idea of injecting disinfectant as possible treatment, controversy over the concept of herd immunity, and hijacking of other countries' medical materials. Today humanity is better equipped with more knowledge and consensus.

In Europe, which was hit by a deadlier second wave of COVID-19, many countries have started the new year with lockdowns or earlier curfews. Sweden tightened its social distancing rules, and Britain has imposed several rounds of national lockdowns. In a rapid response to the more contagious variant, dozens of countries have announced bans or restrictions on travel from Britain.

When COVID-19 started to sweep China during its traditional New Year festival marked by enormous population flows, a tight system for virus control involving all sectors of society was swiftly in place, featuring early intervention to break chains of transmission, a well-guarded community-based line of defense, etc.

Now, China has long got the virus under control and become the first major economy to return to growth, a testament to the effectiveness of its anti-pandemic measures, like mandatory mask-wearing policy, use of health QR codes with authorization from the public, and strict quarantine rules.

"This pandemic has shown that China has done wonderful work for the world to follow as an example," said Ejaz Ahmad Khan, a specialist in infectious diseases at Islamabad-based Shifa International Hospital. "Even after one year, China is still on alert. And that's why we see very few cases while the world is struggling to go through the pandemic right now."