The world braces for another pandemic holiday season

This week we’re looking at what awaits the world’s faithful when celebrating major holidays in the second pandemic year.

FAITH IN THE TIME OF COVID: HOLIDAYS AMID A NEW WAVE — As Covid cases are on the rise around the world once again, public health officials are trying to balance giving people room to celebrate religious holidays in a second pandemic year with concerns that bringing people together could spur more outbreaks.

POLITICO health reporter Susannah Luthi writes us: Years ago, I spent Ramadan in Cairo, where the sleepy fasting days, the street crowds at iftar and the all-night festivities filled that entire sprawling metropolis with an unforgettable intensity. Now, as a Catholic, I also feel the sadness of yet another disrupted Easter season. So I wanted to look at how religious societies are grappling with a second year of limits on deeply rooted traditions now that Passover, Easter and Ramadan are once again upon us.

In some ways, the pandemic’s even worse a year later. We’ve got vaccines, but they remain a hazy hope for hundreds of millions of people amid the slow global rollout – including many in countries where religious celebrations are so deeply part of the social fabric.

Jews are celebrating Passover through this weekend. Holy Week celebrated by many Christians will culminate in Easter on Sunday. The Muslim holy month of Ramadan starts April 13, and is particularly communal: days of fasting are broken by sundown celebrations and country-specific traditions – from children singing for candies in the United Arab Emirates, to women-only henna-painting confabs in Pakistan and men’s sporting games in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Hindu Holi festival of colors has just wrapped in India – somberly, according to the family WhatsApp thread of one of our POLITICO colleagues. One text from Calcutta described people looking sadly at photos from past years of “playing holi;” another from Mumbai said with cases on the rise officials were talking about another lockdown – and no celebrations at all.

Against this backdrop, the World Health’s Organization Covid-19 lead Maria Van Kerkhove urged people to celebrate the holidays virtually and avoid mingling indoors.

“We will get to a point where this pandemic will be over – I promise we will get there. But we need to put in the work now to drive transmission down, especially as we are rolling out vaccines,” she said last week.

Yet after months of pandemic fatigue and rising infection rates in most world regions, countries as disparate as Saudi Arabia and Ecuador are each figuring out their own balancing act for this second holiday season.

For the first time in over a year, Saudi Arabia reopened its high speed railway this week and plans up to 54 trips per day during Ramadan. On the other side of the world, Ecuadorians head into Easter under fresh restrictions as hospitals are overwhelmed. Highway travel is restricted. Alcohol sales are banned. The beaches are closed.

Egypt, which has a population of 100 million, will allow people inside mosques for daily prayers and to gather for traditional communal night prayers. But the massive street gatherings for iftar are banned – and officials expect a surge after Ramadan. The wealthy nation of UAE, which ranks second to Israel in per-capita vaccines administered, will reopen mosques this year. But it will nonetheless maintain strict precautions, which include confining iftar gatherings to just members of the same household and barring restaurants from distributing iftar meals on site.

In Rome, Pope Francis won’t celebrate Holy Week and Easter Masses in a crowded St. Peter’s square as usual, but in a nearly empty Basilica.

Antigua, Guatemala, has canceled its famous Semana Santa procession where people cover the streets with elaborate flower carpets. Meanwhile, churches remain open in Rio de Janeiro, which closed beaches to curb the overwhelming number of cases and deaths gripping Brazil.

WELCOME BACK TO GLOBAL PULSE, where this former owner of a German shepherd who used to bite everyone outside our household sympathizes with the Bidens’ First Dog travails. Our poor old Max was eventually sent out to live with family in the countryside. Here’s hoping that Major Biden can get it together.

Global Pulse is a team effort. Thanks to my editors Jason Millman and Joanne Kenen and to my colleagues Susannah Luthi and Sarah Owermohle for their help this week. Follow me on Twitter: @carmenpaun. Send tips and ideas to [email protected]

Q&A WITH BIDEN’S TOP GLOBAL HEALTH OFFICIAL — Loyce Pace, the first woman of color to head global affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, is at the center of President Joe Biden’s efforts to reposition the U.S. as a global health leader after the disruptive Trump years and the country’s own pandemic struggles.

Pace spoke to Global Pulse about how America plans to – eventually – share vaccine doses and about calls for revamping the international outbreak response system. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Once the U.S. starts sharing vaccines, will the focus be on the Americas?

If and when we’re in a position to share, we want to do that meaningfully, and we want to do that very thoughtfully, particularly through the COVAX facility. The president’s already sent some important signals by providing financing to the facility and pledging additional dollars to Gavi. We still see that as an important partnership, and as a key collaboration in order to vaccinate the world.

There’s also the Quad partnership with India, and the opportunity to increase manufacturing is an important part of the solution too.

What comes next in identifying the coronavirus origin, and how hard will this work be given all the political tensions between the U.S. and China?

There are still a lot of unanswered questions and in particular, really getting a better handle on the data and evidence is going to be critically important.

What also has maybe been lost somewhat is that there’s a phase two of this investigation. As a scientist, as a public health professional, I’m keen for that information to be more widely available and known.

Leaders of more than a dozen countries — but not the United States — called this week for an international treaty on pandemic preparedness and response. What do you think about it?

We want to be sure that whatever is being put forward is really going to solve the problem. From our standpoint, it remains to be seen what is required, what would be the best next step and certainly we are open to having a conversation about a range of options. There are likely a range of options out there and not a silver bullet.

PANDEMIC FLARES AGAIN IN THE WORLD’S WORST HUMANITARIAN SITUATION — After six years of civil war, over half of Yemen’s 30 million people don’t have enough food to eat. Over 3 million mothers and children need treatment for acute malnutrition. Now, amid a second wave of Covid-19, international aid staff in the country are pleading for help.

Yemen had reported 4,200 infections and 900 deaths since the pandemic started, but now a month-long wave has added roughly 100 new reported cases per day. Studies suggest overall infection numbers could be between 50 and 100 percent higher, said Adham Rashad Ismail Abdel-Moneim, the WHO representative in Yemen.

“Almost all intensive care units are filled with patients,” Abdel-Moneim told us. Scaling up treatment is difficult, as almost half of the nation’s health care facilities are no longer operational. Many people showing up at hospitals with Covid-19 have other untreated diseases, putting them at higher risk of death or developing a severe case, according to aid workers on the ground.

The pandemic is flaring up on top of a slew of infectious diseases plaguing Yemen, including the worst cholera outbreak in modern times, with 270,000 cases recorded last year. There are also cases of dengue, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, tuberculosis and even polio, Abdel-Moneim said.

Yemen is controlled by warring groups, making the Covid vaccination effort all that more challenging. On Wednesday, the first batch of 360,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines, delivered through the global vaccine equity effort COVAX, arrived in Aden, where Yemen’s internationally recognized government is based. Houthi rebels who control the capital city and much of northern Yemen will receive a small portion to inoculate health workers.

International funding for Yemen has dwindled as the war drags on and countries fight the pandemic within their borders. The United Nations last month only managed to raise $1.7 billion of a $3.85 billion target at a fundraising conference.

“We’re running tired, because we need more resources, we need more staff and we don’t know where to go; every time we close a door, another communicable disease appears,” Abdel-Moneim said.

AMID TUMULT, BRAZIL PRESIDENT SHIFTS GEARS – It’s a dangerous moment for the pandemic in Brazil. And perhaps politically, too.

The country is recording over 3,000 Covid-19 deaths per day; some people die awaiting an ICU bed. Right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro is suddenly touting vaccine procurement and efforts to ramp up immunization amid growing public anger over the pandemic response. Bolsonaro met with governors he’d regularly sparred with to coordinate on the response, and even started wearing a mask in public at times. U.S. infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci met with Brazilian authorities this week, after a session last week was postponed.

It’s a slight, but notable shift for a bombastic leader who has downplayed the coronavirus risk, told his countrymen to stop “whining” about the pandemic, and jokingly suggested (we think) the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine’s side effects could include turning people into crocodiles. That’s not to say Bolsonaro is totally reformed – he’s still resisting public health restrictions, leaving it to governors and mayors to try to enforce but without much success.

Bolsonaro appears to be quickly repositioning himself after a popular political rival has emerged as a likely contender in the October 2022 presidential election. The president reshuffled his Cabinet this week, and his foreign minister departed after failures to secure vaccine supplies from abroad. That was followed quickly by the resignation of Brazil’s armed forces leaders, raising concerns about whether Bolsonaro would look to consolidate military power behind him.

Ultimately what happens to this volatile mix of politics and pandemic could affect the world. A more contagious variant known as P1 has already emerged in the country, and experts worry uncontrolled Covid surges could spawn more virus mutations that evade available vaccines.

Bolsonaro’s vulnerability: Brazil’s Supreme Court weeks ago annulled left-wing former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s convictions on corruption charges. Lula, as he’s known, was credited with Brazil’s economic boom while in office between 2003 and 2010, and he’s expected to run next year, even as he faces other corruption charges.

Lula has slammed Bolsonaro’s response to the virus, calling the pandemic deaths in Brazil a genocide and asking world leaders to come to Brazil’s rescue.

“My personal impression is that Bolsonaro is afraid of Lula, because he never had to face Lula in a direct competition,” said Mauricio Santoro, a political science professor at the Rio de Janeiro State University. “Lula is rising as the only option” to lead a national pandemic response, even for people who don’t like him and believe he is corrupt, he said.

PANDEMIC WORSENED MOTHERS AND BABIES’ HEALTH — A new report in the Lancet drives home just how devastating pandemic-related barriers to health care have been for pregnant people.

The report, which pulled together data from 40 studies covering 17 countries, found that rates of stillbirth and maternal mortality went up by about one-third in those countries, which included India, Mexico and Turkey. Things were even worse in poorer countries where people may struggle to get prenatal care even in the best of times.

Researchers found one silver lining: The odds of preterm birth in rich countries appeared to decrease by 10 percent during the pandemic. The researchers say that could be attributed to changes in health care delivery and people’s behavior, warranting further study that could help understand what triggers premature births.

THE NEXT HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE? — A generic drug that some have pointed to as a possible Covid treatment is raising the specter of the hydroxychloroquine debate.

Ivermectin, used to treat several parasitic diseases in people and animals, has been touted by some as a potential miracle cure. But WHO on Wednesday said it should only be given to Covid patients through clinical trials, citing a lack of evidence supporting its effectiveness. POLITICO’s Ashleigh Furlong has more on the hype and controversy surrounding the drug, which is being used in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Latin America and South Africa.