Malaysia's declaration of a state of emergency this week underlines the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic there. This is the first time since 1969 that a nationwide state of emergency has been declared in the country. Given the parlous situation in which beds and intensive care units at hospitals for Covid-19 patients are nearly full, the emergency powers are seen as a move to control and flatten the number of daily positive cases that have breached four figures continuously since last month. Malaysia also announced fresh nationwide movement restrictions. Five states - Melaka, Johor, Penang, Selangor and Sabah - and the federal territories of Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya have re-entered the movement control order regime. Malaysians who were looking forward to the easing of restrictions are faced instead with having to regain the momentum of recovery from the dreaded disease. This reversal shows how fragile any seeming recovery from the pandemic may prove to be.

In Britain, a variant of the virus has destroyed hopes of the country returning to economic and social normal any time soon. Earlier this month, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered a new national lockdown to try to slow a surge in cases that threatened to overwhelm parts of the health system before the vaccination programme reached a critical mass. A more contagious variant of the coronavirus, spreading at great speed, was putting hospitals under greater pressure from Covid-19 than at any time since the start of the pandemic. Now, the British authorities are warning ominously that the country's worst weeks of the crisis are imminent.