World Health Organisation emergencies chief warns COVID-19 ‘may never go away’
The new coronavirus may never be wiped out entirely and countries will have to learn to live with it, the World Health Organisation has warned.
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The new coronavirus may be here to stay, according to the World Health Organisation’s emergencies chief.
In a news briefing on Wednesday, Dr Michael Ryan warned “the virus may never go away” and, without a vaccine, it could take years for the population to build immunity against COVID-19.
“This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities,” he said.
Dr Ryan touched on the fact other previously novel diseases, such as HIV, have never disappeared but instead had effective treatments developed to allow people to live with the disease.
This could be the case for the new coronavirus despite efforts underway to develop a vaccine.
While it was impossible for Dr Ryan to predict when the pandemic might be controlled, he said there was hope an effective vaccine would be developed.
Even then, Dr Ryan said it would still require a huge amount of work to produce and distribute worldwide to people willing to be immunised.
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“Every single one of those steps is fraught with challenges,” he said.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, said she recognised some people were “in a state of feeling quite some despair.”
However, she pointed out stopping the virus even without medical interventions was possible. “The trajectory of this outbreak is in our hands,” she said.
“We have seen some countries bring the virus under control.”
Originally published as World Health Organisation emergencies chief warns COVID-19 ‘may never go away’