The government must answer this question frankly instead of being surprised that the international press, with the help of their local correspondents, has put Mauritius on its list of countries at risk. Of course, the local or international arsonists will continue to say that the situation is out of control, unless we come with facts and figures.
“The situation is under control“, claims the government. The coronavirus is global and nobody knows what to do. At some point, we will have to live with the disease just as we live with other fatal diseases. Covid-19 continues to spread around the world, with more than 224 million confirmed cases and 4.6 million deaths in about 200 countries. The United States, India, and Brazil have had the largest number of confirmed cases, followed by the United Kingdom, Russia, and France. Very few countries have been spared.
The global economy is on its knees with thousands of companies on the verge of bankruptcy. The cost of living continues to rise. This macabre scenario is not only applicable to Mauritius. Of course, the difference is that our health service has never been upgraded as it should be. Lack of medicines, lack of hygiene, poor management are the key words. The reason for these deficiencies may be that successive governments have favored a two-speed development where they preferred to favor the private sector over the public sector in the medical field, for reasons of interest. Those, who have the financial means, are treated in the private sector while those, who cannot afford those services, must turn to the public health service with approximate care bordering on amateurism.
This situation is the result of government policy. Mauritius, which has the luxury of very large infrastructure projects, has neither the means nor the capacity to manage our hospitals. This is represented by the number of cases of alleged medical errors that remain unanswered or complaints that remain as dead letters.
The truth is that the government and its advisors spend much of their time reacting to the situations we find ourselves in. These reactions, however, are not always the best ones. What we want is clear information; because a clumsy or incomplete message can lead to a cycle of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Since the second wave of Covid-19 in Mauritius, pandemic management and communication has been very controversial. The PM needs to conduct an evaluation of this team that has been managing the problem. The people are not satisfied with the results obtained so far. Yesterday, a parent reported the stressful experience of picking up his child in a school where a teacher tested positive. One wonders if the result had been found the day before why have the parents not been notified during the same evening.
We can’t avoid this virus for the rest of our lives, but we can minimize its impact.
The coronavirus is here to stay,” says Sarah Zhang in an article published on The Atlantic.
It may be hard to imagine a future with Intensive Care Units filling up once again during this wave of the Delta variant, but this pandemic will end. One way or another, it will end. The current spikes in cases and deaths are the results of a new coronavirus meeting naïve immune systems. When enough people have acquired immunity through vaccination or infection – preferably through vaccination – the coronavirus will become what epidemiologists call “endemic“. It will not be eliminated, but will no longer disrupt our lives.
With this initial immunity coverage, there will be fewer hospitalizations and fewer deaths from Covid-19. Boosters can also periodically build immunity. Cases may continue to rise and fall in this scenario, perhaps seasonally, but the worst consequences will be avoided.
We do not know exactly how the cold coronaviruses began to infect humans, but some have speculated that at least one of them began as a pandemic. If immunity to the new coronavirus weakens as it has with the others, it will continue to cause reinfections and infectious breakthroughs, more and more of them over time, but still quite mild. We will also need to rethink our perspective on Covid-19. Coronavirus is not something that we can avoid forever; we need to prepare for the possibility that we will all be exposed in some way. “It’s something we’re going to have to live with,” says infectious disease researcher Richard Webby. “And as long as it doesn’t impact health care as a whole, I think we can do that.” Coronavirus will no longer be a novelty to our immune systems or our society.
RN
