Is it over?

Many if us want to believe that the COVID plague is over. After over two years, we have learned to live with COVID.

Tourists crowded Singapore’s Orchard Road two days after Christmas. Few were wearing masks. Our favorite Takashimaya food court was too crowded for comfort.

We waited for the lunch crowd to thin out before having the nerve to remove our masks for a quick lunch at the food court on Paragon, across the street.

But I knew that was dangerous too. The viruses circulating in the air from people’s breaths aren’t going to respect our lunch break. As soon as we got back to the hotel, we sprayed our nostrils with VirX, a nitric oxide solution recommended for a situation like thus.

The next day we got our fifth COVID shots, the third booster that covers the prevailing Omicron strain. It was not cheap to get this shot in a private clinic. Only Singaporean citizens and permanent residents can get this for free.

But I figured it was worth it. No one knows when this bivalent vaccine will be available back home. DOH and FDA only very recently approved its use, months after the US and Singapore, among other countries, made it available to their citizens. Another failure of our health bureaucrats!

It is worrisome China will soon allow their citizens to travel abroad. COVID is now on a wild surge in China. In one European country, almost half a plane load of Chinese tourists tested positive of COVID.

Our DOH has rejected taking any precautions similar to those taken by the US and Japan. Sounds like a replay of early 2020 when DOH also refused to do anything out of fear of displeasing China. We know what happened a few weeks after… a full blown epidemic and lockdowns.

Perhaps requiring Chinese travelers to present a negative PCR test, as the US is requiring, is not enough. But at least we will not look too reckless. Maybe if DOH acted quickly on making the bivalent vaccines available, we won’t be as worried.

What do the public health experts say? CNN had an informative report.

After China rapidly eased restrictions, there is now concern about the risk of new variants emerging in 2023.

“It is a worry,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

The Chinese government has not been sharing a lot of information about the genetic composition of the viruses that it’s seeing there, Schaffner said.

“Because the Chinese government was not doing that, that was the main reason CDC put this new travel requirement in place. It’s certainly not to prevent simple transmission of COVID from China here. We’ve got plenty of COVID. That would be like telling people not to pour a bucket of water into a swimming pool,” he said.

“This travel testing requirement is a way to buy us some time and help create somewhat of a buffer between ourselves and China, should a new variant suddenly appear in that country.”

PCR testing of travellers from China won’t prevent new COVID-19 cases from coming to the United States or new variants from emerging, CNN quotes Dr. Carlos del Rio, the executive associate dean for the Emory School of Medicine and Grady Health System in Atlanta.

“I don’t think we’re going to see much benefit, honestly,” he said of the travel requirements.

“The most important thing we need right now is for the Chinese to have more transparency and tell us exactly what’s going on, and that is pretty much a diplomatic decision. This is about diplomacy.”

“So when you have a situation like what’s starting to turn out in China, where you have millions upon millions of infections, every one of those infections is just one additional opportunity for the virus to pick up a random mutation that might make it better at infecting people,” he said.

“Combine that with the fact that the Chinese population has been using less-than-optimal vaccines and has apparently not been as good about putting boosters into their population as other countries have, that means there’s probably a lower amount of immunity in the population.”

COVID-19 is in a relatively “stable” state right now in the United States, CNN quoted Dr. Jessica Justman, an associate professor of medicine in epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and senior technical director of the global health program ICAP.

To reduce the risk of increased COVID-19 spread, Justman said, it would be important for people in the new year to continue to stay up-to-date with their COVID-19 vaccinations.

“I’m concerned that China right now is one giant incubator of SARS-CoV-2. There is the potential to have so many infections and with that, new variants,” she said.

“I think we’re going to be looking at new variants of concern” in 2023, Justman said.

“The question is: Will we go back to a point where we have a variant of concern that causes such severe illness that we don’t get the benefit of our protection from prior infections and from prior vaccinations? … I’m going to be optimistic and say I don’t think we’re going to go back to that point.”

Our COVID experience tells us we need a DOH that is proactively taking steps to mitigate any upsurge of the virus. Working fast on getting the bivalent vaccine here is of top importance.

Other than our medical frontliners, our tourism workers should also be given this Omicron sensitive vaccine right away if we don’t want to see the industry needlessly falling on its knees.  They were prioritized by the previous tourism secretary, the current one should too.

Let us not fool ourselves. An epidemic could resurface if we and our government become complacent. Living with the virus in a new normal doesn’t mean being careless.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco