World Health Organisation predicts Covid severity will decrease over time

The World Health Organisation has released a report on how the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to play out — and how it may end.

The World Health Organisation says the severity of Covid-19 will most likely lessen over time as the virus mutates.

The WHO unveiled its Strategic Preparedness, Readiness and Response Plan to End the Global COVID-19 Emergency in 2022 report early this morning, which lays out three possible scenarios for how the pandemic will evolve this year.

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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organisation. Picture: Andreas Arnold/picture alliance via Getty Images

“Based on what we know now, the most likely scenario is that the Covid-19 virus continues to evolve, but the severity of disease it causes reduces over time as immunity increases due to vaccination and infection,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“Periodic spikes in Covid-19 cases and deaths may occur as immunity wanes, which may require periodic boosting for vulnerable populations.

“In the best-case scenario, we may see less severe variants emerge, and boosters or new formulations of vaccines won’t be necessary”

However, he also warned about a possible spike in cases and deaths if a new variant emerged.

“In the worst-case scenario, a more virulent and highly transmissible Covid-19 virus variant emerges. Against this new threat, people’s protection against severe disease and death, either from prior vaccination or infection, will wane rapidly,” Dr Ghebreyesus said.

A worker, wearing a protective gear in Shanghai on March 30, 2022. Picture: AFP

The report cautioned that the pandemic remained an acute global emergency.

More than 143 million new cases were reported globally in the first two months of 2022 alone.

Almost six million deaths from Covid-19 had been reported to the WHO up to the end of February 2022, which the WHO described as “an unacceptably high number that is almost certainly an underestimate”.

Workers transfer 19-year-old Janete Vasconcelos da Silva, an indigenous woman eight-months pregnant and who has been diagnosed with Covid-19. Picture: AFP

Ending the acute phase of the pandemic

The WHO’s report states that careful surveillance of Covid-19 transmission and a widespread vaccination program are needed to end the acute phase of the pandemic.

Much of the world is already vaccinated but large populations in Africa - and PNG - have not received doses.

The WHO said efforts must be focused primarily on vaccinating the most clinically vulnerable people in society.

The UN body said it could be necessary for governments to impose public health and social measures, even in periods of low circulation of SARS-CoV-2.