It is possible to effectively combat the coronavirus. The number of countries that have brought their number of new daily infections either to zero or very close to it continues to grow. A list of 45, tallied by www.endcoronavirus.org, includes Cambodia, China, Bahamas, Cuba, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, New Zealand, Norway, Thailand, Slovakia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Vietnam. The only number not capable of exponential growth is zero.
For too many nations, however, infections continue to grow nearly exponentially: Bangladesh, Bulgaria, India, nearly all nations in Ibero-America, Iraq, South Africa, and even Israel, which had brought its cases down almost to zero in mid-May, but which has since seen daily numbers that exceed what had been its late-March peak.
Nations that have aggressively pursued the available health measures — masks, distancing, contact tracing, and isolation/quarantine — have succeeded, while those that have taken a fragmented approach face, in the words of WHO director Dr. Tedros, a “long, hard road ahead.”
