Across the globe, SARS-CoV-2 is evolving ways to evade the immune system and become more infectious. Blown pandemic response plans are to blame.

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Hannage pointed to what’s going on right now in Manaus, a city in the Brazilian Amazon where a devastating surge in May left up to 70 percent of its residents infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to an analysis published this month in Science. Doctors and researchers there assumed the city was safe for a while—that herd immunity, or close to it, had been reached. But this month, the Manaus public health system collapsed again under a new Covid crush, leaving hospitals scrambling to get enough oxygen for its mass of patients. “I’m not yet aware of any evidence to suggest that the P1 variant is more likely to infect or reinfect people,”...

Across the globe, SARS-CoV-2 is evolving ways to evade the immune system and become more infectious. Blown pandemic response plans are to blame.

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Hannage pointed to what’s going on right now in Manaus, a city in the Brazilian Amazon where a devastating surge in May left up to 70 percent of its residents infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to an analysis published this month in Science. Doctors and researchers there assumed the city was safe for a while—that herd immunity, or close to it, had been reached. But this month, the Manaus public health system collapsed again under a new Covid crush, leaving hospitals scrambling to get enough oxygen for its mass of patients. “I’m not yet aware of any evidence to suggest that the P1 variant is more likely to infect or reinfect people,” said Hanage. “But the fact that this is happening in a place that had previously been exposed to such high amounts of transmission is extremely worrying, very worrying indeed.”...