No resting on laurels in virus fight

The appearance of locally transmitted novel coronavirus infections in Anhui and Liaoning provinces over the past two weeks indicates that there are still risks that the virus will make a resurgence.

Since the epidemic was largely brought under control last year, many people in the country have felt that life has returned to normal. That's an important reason why many don't regard vaccines as a necessity. So now the alarm bells are ringing once again, particularly against the backdrop that new variants of the virus are wreaking havoc in India and some other countries, people who had previously been dragging their feet are rushing to get vaccinated.

Although the early detection, early treatment and early quarantine measures have proved to be effective to cut the transmission channels of the virus, it is undeniable that the social and economic costs of conventionalizing these measures on a large scale have been huge. And the efficiency of the epidemic prevention and control system's responses cannot increase proportionally with the increase in infectiousness of the virus variants.

Nationwide inoculation, as shown in many other countries, is arguably the most economical and efficient way to check the spread of the virus by establishing herd immunity.

About 400 million people out of its total population of 1.42 billion have had their jabs in China. But according to the estimates of experts, the country will not have herd immunity until at least 840 million people are inoculated against the virus.

It should be noted that the close contacts of the cases appearing in Anhui and Liaoning have been found in Beijing and Hubei, Jiangsu, Hebei and Shanxi provinces. While the population flow and economic activities have largely recovered, any slackening of vigilance by local governments or any lapse of the pandemic prevention and control system at this critical moment might turn a regional outbreak into a national epidemic.

The raging of the virus in India offers a lesson to the rest of the world that no matter how many battles we have already won against the virus in the past, as long as it has not withdrawn from the last foothold in the world, each day should be taken as the first day encountering the humanity's common enemy.

People can feel worn down by the battle against the virus as time goes. But the virus is tireless.