June 28, 2021
Covid’s D-Day.
Huy Truong
From London to New York and Hong Kong, the Delta coronavirus variant has emerged as a potential wild card that threatens to upend plans for returning to pre-pandemic normality.
In Europe and North America, the rapid spread of the highly transmissible variant first identified in India has placed a question mark over hopes for a normal summer, even as climbing vaccination rates spur the rolling back of restrictions and resumption of tourism and travel.
In the Asia-Pacific region, the variant is fuelling outbreaks in countries that have struggled to manage the virus, while reinforcing the hyper-cautious stance of "zero-Covid" economies reliant on strict border controls, which have prevented countless deaths but have also come under mounting criticism as other parts of the world look towards post-pandemic life.