As the first anniversary of the beginning of the first lockdown in New York City is coming up, here’s a look at how other nations are dealing with the virus in the first three months of 2021.
An ongoing study by the University of Oxford (there is a link at the bottom to the website for the study) tracks the wide range of measures that various nations have taken to slow down the spread of COVID-19 in their respective countries. The study has used many government-response indexes, economic indexes, and health-and-containment indexes to determine a score from 1-100 of how strict each nation’s lockdown policy is at that moment in time. Note that these numbers are subject to change depending on how COVID-19 cases vary per-nation at any given time.
Recently, Cuba entered a lockdown-like state, as COVID-19 cases have risen in the nation from 193 on January 1, 2021, to 937 on February 16. Cuba is developing a new COVID-19 vaccine on the island, and as they near their release date for the vaccine, they will need to quell the growing rate of coronavirus cases in the country.
Eritrea is another nation that has enforced increasingly strict measures on its citizens in early 2021. Since December 28, 2020, Eritrea has held a firm quarantine policy for travelers coming into the country. Additionally, Eritrea has been extremely strict about letting workplaces and schools open. Most schools and businesses in Eritrea are not open, as Coronavirus rules have become progressively harsher in the new year. This is a result of a small wave of new COVID-19 cases. On December 20, 2020, the COVID-19 rates in Eritrea began to rise and rose until January 14, 2021, when 209 new cases were reported from the country.
Lebanon has had some of the strictest lockdown restrictions in the world over the past year. Lebanon had success keeping the virus out of the country from April through August of 2020 however, since August 1, 2020, cases have been slowly rising. On November 14, 2020, Lebanon’s government decided to enforce stricter measures to prevent the transmission of the virus. These measures include a 14-day quarantine and limited school and business openings. Despite these rules, cases rose through the end of 2020 and into the first week of 2021. From November 1, 2020, to January 16, 2021, COVID-19 infections rose from 1,600 a day to over 4,800 a day.
Although the number of cases worldwide rose significantly after New Year’s, some nations have loosened restrictions as the end of the horrid year of 2020 spilled over into 2021. Countries like Nicaragua and Afghanistan, which have had notoriously loose measures in regards to COVID-19 protocols, have loosened them even further. Neither nation has seen a large spike in cases since July of 2020!
Guessing which nations will go into lockdown has been like playing the lottery: nobody knows when there will be a spike in cases in one country or a decline in another. All we can do as citizens of the United States is try and stay safe, wash our hands, wear a mask, and hope that this pandemic will be over soon.
The link to the database is: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker
