Europe is leading the way

Jun 22, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

America is the world’s richest and most powerful nation. It has economic might backed by the world’s most powerful military. But for some time now, America’s invincibility, indeed American ‘exceptionalism’ has been threatened.
In the field of innovation, America is rated ninth behind Germany, South Korea, Singapore and Switzerland. This is according to the Bloomberg Index.
Russia has also surpassed America in the development of military technology. America still has the strongest military in the world but it is losing ground.
When it comes to science, Britain is now pushing its head in front of the pack. That country is a leading contender to develop a coronavirus vaccine before the Americans. They hope to do so by September while the Americans are still projecting that their vaccine will not be ready until the end of the year.
The Americans are being left behind. The European Union in the meantime already has an order for 300 million vaccines. China is now in the second phase of tests for a vaccine and it too may be able to bring out a vaccine before the American pharmaceutical giants.
United Kingdom has announced a major breakthrough in the treatment of seriously-ill patients. A cheap drug called dexamethasone has been found to reduce deaths in critically ill patients. The drug was found to reduce the death rate of those on ventilators as much as 30% and by 20% for those on oxygen. It has not been found to have any effect on non-critical cases. South Africa has already approved the use of this drug for the treatment of patients.
Americans had ramped up the use of a drug called remdesivir after it was found to increase the recovery time of persons infected with COVID-19. The breakthrough with dexamethasone has become the most exciting development, even though pharmaceutical companies have been increasing their production of remdesivir. India is reporting the production of a generic version already.
Europe has sprung ahead of the pack in terms of the development of treatments for the coronavirus. There is more than a good chance that it is to Europe to which countries like Guyana will have to look towards to help it to get treatments, including a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Europe is also winning the war in controlling the spread of the coronavirus. New cases and new deaths are coming down while in America the number of new cases have skyrocketed over the weekend. America had 33,000 new infections on Saturday. This is highest one day increase in weeks.
The World Health Organization has sounded a warning about the increases in coronavirus cases. The organization announced that 183,000 infections occurred last Saturday, the highest one day increase. Brazil accounted for 54,000 of those new cases and second was the United States.
It was earlier projected that some 140,000 persons were going to die in the US during this first wave of the coronavirus. With the recent spike in infections, there are models which are now projecting as much as 200,000.
With more anti-racism protests planned for the United States this week, the situation can get worse. A spike from these protests is expected from this week onwards and show the dangers of large public gatherings.
Florida is now emerging as a hotspot. Incidentally, a number of Guyanese are now being repatriated through Miami which is located in the state of Florida. On Saturday, Florida had just over 4,000 new infections, second only to California.
Guyana has to be mindful of what the recent developments indicate. Parts of the United States were opened slowly. Yet no sooner, there was a spike in cases because of the fact that the virus is highly contagious
Guyana therefore has to be careful about opening its borders too soon to allow flights from the United States. The government has an obligation to bring home its nationals but not necessarily to bring in visitors too soon from the epicenter of the global pandemic.
The coronavirus epidemic in the United States still remains unstable even though some of the deaths in New York and New Jersey are falling. The worst is not yet over and a second wave can be devastating to both America’s health and its reputation.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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