The danger presented by new strains of the Covid-19 virus, which have been discovered in the UK, Brazil, and South Africa, present a new risk to people everywhere. There is some doubt as to whether the new strains are more virulent in the sense that they may have a more devastating impact on patients, causing a larger number of serious illnesses and even deaths, or whether the main danger is presented only by the higher level of trans mobility. Certainly the funding so far, established by an elaborate genome testing of the virus after the PCR test, has shown that the strain found in Brazil is potentially more dangerous, and has already wiped out very large portions of the people living in the town of Manaus deep in the Amazon forest. The fact that these people are indigenous persons who live in the Amazon makes their deaths even more tragic at a time when the tribes of Amazon are being wiped out. But the real threat is the risk the new strains present to the world.
This is especially true in countries where genome testing is not widely carried out. Pakistan, for example, has the facility to carry out sophisticated genome sequencing with the machine for this available only at the National Institute of Health in Islamabad. But we now hear that Punjab is attempting to acquire a machine to carry out genome testing and determine if any strains of the mutated virus are being found in the country. There's some suspicion among medical experts that this may already have happened, creating a new risk. There is also the question of which experts are still unable to answer fully, as to whether the vaccines now coming in to various parts of the world and expected sooner in Pakistan will prove effective against the new strains. If they are proved to be ineffective, companies have said they will be able to modify the vaccine, but this of course means more time and in the meanwhile, more deaths.
The fact that genome sequencing is carried out only in the world's most developed countries adds to the dangers involved in the whole process. In many countries, it is simply not known what strains have already entered the territory and how these are spreading. Pakistan, for instance, continues to allow in flights from the UK, while flights from Brazil arrive indirectly to the country often via the Middle East. This is also true of flights from South Africa. The issue needs to be examined as we try to combat Covid-19. This challenge is proving to be harder than the world expected and certainly for developing and poorer countries like Pakistan, it is a huge one. Pakistan's Minister Asad Umar has assured us that vaccines have been procured and their administration will start quickly. We hope this is true. Other than the vaccine, there seems to be no other way of stopping the virus, which has already killed over 200,000 people and is nearing the 300,000 figure in terms of mortalities around the world. Pakistan also needs to try and prevent new strains from taking hold of the country through genome sequencing, so that it can try and manage the problem as effectively as possible.