Arab world must learn to live with COVID-19

Despite the threat posed by the omicron variant and the latest IHU variant, with its 46 mutations, the world’s governments appear to be done with COVID-19, even if large swaths of the population are not. Worse, mitigation failures, vaccine apartheid and unusual levels of hesitancy across the planet are constantly shifting the finish line, where most countries can verifiably declare the success of their “zero COVID” policies.

If it was not clear enough prior to omicron, IHU or any other new variants that are yet to appear, the world can no longer completely eradicate COVID-19 — but the pandemic playbook has yet to change from eradication to adaptation.

Unlike previous outbreaks, which were fairly easy to manage with universal contagion mitigation strategies, COVID-19 — coupled with each country or region’s idiosyncrasies — has overturned what had become accepted convention. For instance, where vaccine penetration is fairly high, i.e., across the developed world, the pandemic will likely become endemic sometime this year, with occasional flare-ups that can be dealt with at a local level.

For the Global South, on the other hand, unequal access to and the ineffective distribution of vaccines have caused fresh outbreaks, as well as the incubation of highly transmissible variants that are resistant to the available vaccines and treatments. One vaccine manufacturer is already warning additional shots may be needed, since the efficacy of the highly touted booster shots will likely decline over time.

Persistent outbreaks in parts of the world that are already struggling to mount effective public health responses in turn risks the Global North’s “splendid isolation,” since new variants can spread rapidly in countries that were poised to reopen after surviving successive waves. Furthermore, most middle and low-income countries have yet to emerge from their pandemic-induced economic fallout, which is now complicated by global supply chain issues and rising inflation.

Should the world fumble its responses yet again in the face of these emerging variants, as well as fail to update the pandemic playbook — tailored to each region’s unique circumstances — it could lead to massive outbreaks. Governments will then be forced to resort to more severe lockdowns, given the lack of fiscal room for maneuver and relevant capacity to bolster the healthcare sector in order to deliver better outcomes.

As a result, there will be even greater political, economic and social disruption, exacerbating existing tensions and introducing newer, more complex challenges to social fabrics that are already on the verge of collapse. There are only a limited number of ways for the Arab world to navigate such crises, but the most crucial factor remains timing. Delaying critical interventions or short-changing common-sense response tools risks an implosion at an inopportune time, when state resources should be geared toward dealing with the pandemic. After all, mismanaged healthcare crises can quickly morph into national, or even regional, security challenges.

However, most state mobilizations to preempt crises across the Middle East and North Africa tend to be highly politicized, even if a particular crisis requires nonpartisan, apolitical expertise to manage it effectively. With regard to COVID-19, politics have long since usurped technocratic interventions, creating a gap between high-level, well-intentioned state responses to a fairly erratic crisis and the front lines entrusted with implementing them. This is a byproduct of decades of needless civil sector largesse that has not only squeezed out spending on critical sectors, but has also created a bureaucratic behemoth that is exceedingly slow to respond to highly fluid situations, if at all.

Clearly, successful COVID-19 mitigation requires a certain nimbleness and adaptability across the decision-making chain, from policymaking all the way down to implementation, guided by constant feedback. This way, governments are better able to address the glaring deficits highlighted by front-line healthcare workers, who remain best placed to pinpoint any shortfalls in resources, funding and staffing that are making the existing interventions ineffective.

However, most governments across the region are far more obsessed with messaging around the virus rather than dealing with it. Thus, when doctors, nurses and other specialists raise objections to erroneous policies, as well as under-resourced or under-funded priorities, it is often construed as political criticism. All this ends with the situation seen in Egypt, where doctors are often jailed for exposing under-reported cases or intimidated into playing down the severity of the crisis, despite a media blitz praising them as heroes.

If the Arab world is to successfully navigate this pandemic, the key will be decentralization. By reforming old conventions and shortening the decision chain, provinces, municipalities and other localities can become highly responsive and adaptable, especially when they have access to adequate resources or funding. This way, a spike in infections in one part of a country can be dealt with easily and quickly, which helps curb the spread of the virus and preempt the incubation of more dangerous variants.

Secondly, it is no longer sufficient to simply board up entire economies and buy the public’s acquiescence by propping up social safety net programs or touting endless stimulus packages. Those resources are finite, with diminishing returns the more frequently they are deployed. Worse, they run up deficits and leave little room in the budget for much-needed spending in sectors that cannot be privatized. Besides, the longer a country stays in lockdown, the riskier it becomes to open it back up again, since the population will likely not have the antibodies needed to protect them from the new variants cropping up in other parts of the world.

Thus, governments will have to find ways to normalize and incentivize testing, contact tracing, the wearing of masks in public spaces and vaccine mandates in the interim, while working on long-term mitigation strategies designed to make societies more resilient to future threats. One major component of those strategies would be how best to ramp up the local production of critical supplies, from personal protective equipment to medical devices and vaccines — especially if they have substantial export potential.

Critical flaws and persistent failures have already resulted in a cascade of disruptions that have had severe socioeconomic impacts, heightening tensions between civil society and governments at the worst possible time. Most Arab world publics have had to grapple with abrupt cuts to social safety nets and shrinking disposable incomes as governments push to rationalize public budgets and rein in deficits.

The prospect of massive civil sector job cuts as a result of International Monetary Fund-mandated deficit management policies also looms large. Mismanaging this pandemic will further compound these woes, especially in countries that are already plagued by a confluence of challenges caused by intractable civil wars, foreign meddling and political malaise.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell