{"id":148473,"date":"2022-03-23T17:32:26","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T21:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/?p=148473"},"modified":"2022-03-23T17:32:26","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T21:32:26","slug":"covid-19-cases-are-exploding-in-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/covid-19-cases-are-exploding-in-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19 cases are exploding in Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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VOX: Across the world, the omicron phase of the Covid-19 pandemic is now piling up towering case counts in places that have largely managed to keep the disease in check until this point. This troubling\u00a0<\/strong>rise may signal that another wave of Covid-19 is rising in countries just coming out of their own omicron shadows, including the United States.<\/p>

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Hong Kong now reports the\u00a0world\u2019s highest death rate<\/a>\u00a0from the disease.\u00a0Hospitals are overwhelmed<\/a>\u00a0and the surge is fueling a\u00a0mental health crisis<\/a>\u00a0and leading to suicides, particularly among elderly residents.<\/p>\n

Mainland China is also seeing major outbreaks in metropolises like\u00a0Shenzhen<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Shanghai<\/a>, putting millions of people under lockdown and halting production in major international manufacturing centers. These outbreaks are testing China\u2019s stomach for its\u00a0zero-Covid<\/a>\u00a0approach to the pandemic, a\u00a0costly but effective<\/a>\u00a0approach where entire cities grind to a halt to control outbreaks.<\/p>

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In South Korea, once hailed as a\u00a0pandemic success story<\/a>, case counts have broken a new record with\u00a0daily reported infections topping 600,000<\/a>.<\/p>

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Australia<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0New Zealand<\/a>, which had previously held cases to enviably low levels, have also seen new spikes in recent weeks. The list goes on:\u00a0Singapore<\/a>,\u00a0Thailand<\/a>,\u00a0Vietnam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Covid-19 cases are now spiking in countries that have managed to hold the virus at bay until now.<\/figcaption>\u00a0Our World in Data<\/a><\/cite><\/span><\/figure>\n

There are some common factors among these outbreaks. The biggest one is that the virus itself has changed. The mutations in the\u00a0omicron variant<\/a>\u00a0of the virus that causes Covid-19, first detected in November 2021, make it the most contagious version of the virus known to date and allowed it to evade immunity \u2014 both from vaccines and from previous infections \u2014 better than other variants. Many of the earlier omicron waves were caused by a subvariant known as BA.1. Another omicron\u00a0subvariant known as BA.2<\/a>\u00a0is even more transmissible and is now driving a distinct spike in new cases.<\/p>

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