Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos for example are doing extremely well, but Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and India not so. It doesn't seem likely that this can be wholly due to individual public health measures as the disparity is huge. Countries with well funded intensive public health measures such as Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan are also doing very well and here the success is understandable.
There is geographic cluster amongst those countries doing very well - is this a clue?
Could there be immunity in the population from exposure to a previous virus similar to SARS 2 eg SARS 1?
Hello Marek,
I can only surmise that these communities/countries have already been exposed to the bats that carry this type of COVID. Thereby they may well have a more active T cell response, with or without the antibody response.
You may be able to cofirm this by looking up the species of bat that are present in these south east asian countries which exist on this peninsula.
Sri Lanka being the exception here for a myriad of other reasons
As we cannot easily measure T cell response this is a tricky area, but in Singapore SARS 1 T cell responses have been found over 10 years after the SARS 1 epidemic. Antibody levels seem to fall off after a few months only but this does not equate to loss of immunity. and much more work on T cells and other aspects of the immune system is needed if we are to understand how to reach 'herd immunity'.
I think herd immunity on its own is a bit of a myth in so far as immunization programmes are necessary to keep herd immunity up.
The south east asian peninsula is probably the answer as the indonesia and malaysia are not so closely linked.
But of course, I agree T cell imminity needs to be studied in more depth.
i agree about herd immunity being unlikely without a vaccine, however as each wave passes population immunity builds up. A less effective vaccine could help reach herd immunity more quickly if there is already some population immunity.
This study is also of interest although its perhaps more pertinent to why people from South Asia seem more at risk of death:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2818-3
I cannot find anything in this which addresses my question, could you please advise?
I think The rapid, intelligent and powerful actions and decisions taken by these countries(Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos) governance throughout the whole pandemic 'especially in the initial stages' played a very crucial role in their success.
I understand Marek’s frustration. I’m not sure any of the response so far address his question. At this point in time there may not be a robust to his query. One possible answer may be that differences in the construction and operation of social, cultural, and economic networks in each of these different places and populations explains the variation in how the virus operates and its lethality.
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