Having first broken out in early 2020, by the time this issue is published the Covid pandemic will have entered its second fall. Living now with such a global plague, people all over the world have been riding successive pandemic waves, one after the other, struggling to survive each one while maintaining the essential functions of society. We have gradually reached an equilibrium, or what people are calling the “new normal,” in which the fear of disease recurrence is always there, though, ultimately, rescue seems to be on its way. Face masks are still much in demand, but the top priority in protection means and concerns has been silently replaced by vaccine supply—its production, distribution, and delivery.
Following my previous Editor’s Notes that brought attention to structural, historical analyses of the Covid pandemic (14.3 and 14.4), in this issue I hope readers will reconsider China as being both in a vulnerable state of cross-species epidemics and an active player in global health. China was considered the pandemic’s epicenter when Covid broke out in Wuhan in December 2019, but as the virus spread to the rest of the world and mutated to create new threats, China seems to have moved out of the spotlight. Its virus situation seems to be improving with a nation-wide vaccination program for its people; it can even spare substantial doses of its domestically made, WHO-listed Covid-19 vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm, for other countries.
