This is a strange Christmas. It probably doesn’t have any equivalent since the 1918-20 ͗flu pandemic which killed millions of people worldwide and took a heavy toll in Guyana as well. While the numbers of Covid-19 cases here are rising, and the disease has had a serious impact in specific locales, particularly those in the interior where mining is prevalent, citizens should be aware that it may not be near its peak yet. Apart from anything else the virus is mutating, as the new variant which was first identified in the English county of Kent demonstrates.
While the UK has been put into effective isolation by a number of countries to prevent the transmission of the new variant which is thought to be up to 70% more infectious than the original, British epidemiologists have expressed the view that the novel strain is already well entrenched in Europe, and is responsible for the renewed surge in infections there. Britain is a world leader in being able to identify mutations to this particular virus rather quickly, but European nations will take longer to establish whether the second wave they are experiencing – even in countries like Denmark and Germany which had so successfully managed the virus during the first wave – is caused by the original form or the mutated one. And if the Kent strain is indeed already in Europe, it will spread far beyond that continent, if it has not already done so.
The British mutation is not the only one causing concern. UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced on Wednesday that two cases of a different variant from the Kent one had been observed in England. The new strain originates in South Africa, and the two persons infected with it had travelled from there. It is this mutation which is believed to be behind the increase in hospitalisations in that country, and is very different from the English one. Apart from anything else it seems to be even more transmissible than the Kent variant and has mutated further.
Scientists have been saying for some time that the virus will probably continue to mutate; it’s what viruses do. Influenza is a classic example: in more affluent societies vulnerable citizens are vaccinated against ͗flu on an annual basis, because the virus is constantly changing. The composition of the vaccine therefore has to change every year as well. What is selected for any given season is thought to be capable of dealing with the three or four viruses which research suggests are the most likely to cause illness and be transmitted. Some years, it must be said, the vaccine is more successful than others.
The good news so far is that the current vaccines which have been developed to counter the coronavirus seem to be effective against the Kent variant as well. One can only hope that applies additionally to the South African variety. Even if it does not, a British scientist has said that it would only take about six weeks to adjust the vaccine to cope with any new strain.
The influenza and coronavirus pandemics are not the only epidemic diseases to which Guyanese citizens have fallen prey in the past. Leaving aside the Indigenous population which was especially vulnerable to all kinds of illnesses, one of the most feared infections was, of course, smallpox. Work by the man sometimes referred to as the ‘Father of Vaccination’, Edward Jenner, inaugurated the long process of eradicating it from the world. Napoleon had all his troops inoculated against it, and the vaccine (derived from cowpox) was available here by at least the beginning of the nineteenth century. Some plantation owners vaccinated their enslaved workers against it.
Apart from that, two of the biggest killers locally were yellow fever and cholera. A 19th century horse-drawn wooden fever ambulance used to stand on display outside the National Museum, but in an act of criminal negligence, the authorities allowed it to fall to pieces there. A vaccine for yellow fever was not developed until the late 1930s, but since it is a mosquito borne infection, the more general use of mosquito netting and at a later stage, the monitoring of homes to ensure there were no containers of standing water, made an impact.
A vaccine for cholera, on the other hand, was developed by a Russian zoologist, Waldemar Haffkine, researching first in Paris and then in India. In the 1890s he worked with a team of Indian doctors inoculating people from the Calcutta slums, and is believed to have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the process. This country also benefited from that work, and nowadays no one here needs a cholera vaccination. There was, however, a very small outbreak of the disease in the 1990s in the North-West. It had entered the country from Venezuela, and was easily eliminated.
Haffkine also found a vaccine for bubonic plague, which was not a problem here, but again, saved countless lives in India.
The other widespread local killer was malaria, for which an effective vaccine has not yet been found. Despite the fact it was endemic in neighbouring states, it was nevertheless eradicated here for a time, largely due to the work of Dr Giglioli, who went for the vector rather than the disease per se. Older coastal citizens will remember trenches and gutters being sprayed regularly with DDT, while senior residents of the interior will also recall the authorities spraying the interior of their houses with the insecticide. Malaria has now returned to the country on account of the abolition on the use of DDT worldwide, and the explosion in mining activity in the interior.
We are fortunate in that we live in an age which has such an understanding of disease processes, and which can develop vaccines so quickly. In 1918, there was no vaccine against the influenza which spread around the world, and they did not know about viruses. The doctors treated the ͗flu as though it were a bacterium. They did, however, have a good grasp of something else which made a difference to the spread of the disease, and that is social distancing and the wearing of masks.
In fact, the need for social distancing, and, it might be added, the closure of borders during epidemics was understood in even earlier times. When London heard about a plague outbreak in the Netherlands in 1663, it placed ships at the mouth of the Thames to stop the ingress of vessels from the continent. This worked for a while, but eventually the Great Plague broke out in 1665. Charles II promptly decamped from the capital to the safety of Oxford leaving the Mayor in charge. People had to go to him to prove they were plague-free so they could get a pass to leave the city.
The Mayor was not about to place himself in close proximity to anyone, and had a gallery built above the reception hall from which he dealt with the applicants down below. Around 70,000 people died in the city, and some suggest the figure may have been as high as 100,000. The Mayor, however, survived, and went on to live to what in those days was a ripe old age.
In this country we seem to have forgotten the reasons for social distancing as it applies to those beyond our immediate circle, as the crowds in downtown Georgetown yesterday would attest. It would help a bit if everyone would wear a mask, but they don’t. But then, as we said in our editorial yesterday, those in authority are hardly setting a very good example, so we should not be surprised if the populace ignores their do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do philosophy.
One thing they did not know about in earlier times was the importance of the frequent washing of hands. People should go out of their way to try and comply with that. No one knows when a vaccine will arrive here, but in the meantime we can all try and observe the rules to inhibit the spread of the virus. The best Christmas gift this year would not come all beribboned in wrapping paper, but would be to try and keep safe, and do the things which would keep those around us safe too.