Particularly concerning is India, where some thought herd immunity may have been reached.

It had not.

Case rates are doubling every 5 days in Delhi.

There’s insufficient sequencing to track variants, but it’s likely they’re involved (our story: https://www.ft.com/content/38f5398a-8588-48a1-86db-3e8050bace51)

Testing has been expanded in India to keep up with the resurgence, but despite more testing, the percentage of tests coming back positive is still climbing.

Even on this more conservative measure, rates are doubling in under a week in many regions.

Lots of Latin American countries are seeing resurgences, with the Brazilian P.1 variant heavily involved.

This is especially grim news considering the region is already the hardest-hit in the world, with more than a million excess deaths already recorded https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1379499695395995649

A lot of us might have thought we’d be on a relatively steady, linear path out of Covid by now.

The examples of France, India and Brazil show how the variants and or slow vaccine rollout can hinder progress to the finish line.

But there are still far more reasons for optimism than pessimism. One example: data from Israel suggests new variants are *not* escaping vaccine-acquired immunity https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1376789789651955717

So don’t get me wrong, we’re on the way out of this. Several countries are very nearly there.

Here is a new chart that we should all be watching over the coming months, as countries seek to follow Israel’s lead and reach the Covid endgame:

For much of the last year, we’ve lived with restrictions to save lives. What we want now is for societies to reopen *without* risking illness & deaths.

That’s the bottom-right quadrant here: people spending more time socialising at bars & cafés, while cases continue to fall.

So there we are. This was a long thread, encapsulating weeks’ worth of our coverage, but I hope it’s been worth the wait.

As usual, do hit me up with any questions and comments, and you can keep track all of the FT’s Covid-19 coverage here: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus 

One more note:

There’s been some alarmist reporting that the situation in Chile shows that its vaccination campaign isn’t working

The data suggest otherwise. As in France, rates are rising much more slowly [if at all] among the most-vaccinated age groups https://twitter.com/RufusSG/status/1380169345486184450

And here’s our story on Chile https://www.ft.com/content/89992bc9-051a-42b5-8be0-60edad4165cb