WHO’s coronavirus warning: ‘Worst is yet to come’

The World Health ­Organisation has warned the ‘worst is yet to come’ as the COVID-19 pandemic death toll passed 500,000.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Picture: AFP

he World Health ­Organisation has warned the “worst is yet to come” as the COVID-19 pandemic death toll passed 500,000 over the past six months.

“We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is this is not even close to being over,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference as the number of confirmed infections topped 10 million.

“Six months ago, none of us could have imagined how our world — and our lives — would be thrown into turmoil by this new virus.

“Globally, the pandemic is actually speeding up.

“We’re all in this together, and we’re all in this for the long haul. We have already lost so much — but we cannot lose hope.”

Dr Tedros criticised misinformation and the politicisation of the virus, saying that unless international unity replaced fractious division, “the worst is yet to come. I’m sorry to say that”.

“With this kind of environment and condition, we fear the worst.”

He said the WHO was sending a team to China to work towards finding the disease’s source, six months after it was first informed of the outbreak in the central city of Wuhan.

The organisation has been pressing China since early May to invite in its experts to help investigate the animal origins of the coronavirus.

“We can fight the virus better when we know everything about the virus, including how it started,” Dr Tedros said,

“We will be sending a team next week to China to prepare for that and we hope that that will lead into understanding how the virus ­started.”

He did not specify the makeup of the team, nor what specifically its mission would consist of.

While the world races to find safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics against COVID-19, Dr Tedros said countries such as South Korea had shown that the virus could be successfully suppressed and controlled without them.

He said governments needed to be “serious” about measures such as contact tracing, and citizens had to take responsibility for personal steps such as maintaining hand hygiene.

Reflecting on the global death toll and infection numbers, he said: “Still, this could have been prevented through the tools we have at hand.

“The critical question that all countries will face in the coming months is how to live with this virus. That is the new normal.”

Dr Tedros’s warning came as America’s top virologist, Anthony Fauci, said the US may never reach immunity levels required to overcome coronavirus because of an “alarmingly large” anti-science sentiment that means too many people could refuse a vaccine.

The search for a vaccine may well be successful by the new year but is unlikely to provide complete protection, the chief White House virus adviser said.

He said he would settle for an inoculation that was 70 to 75 per cent effective, giving countries a chance of establishing herd immunity, which effectively stops it from spreading. But he said he was concerned by the high numbers who said they would not have a jab.

The weekly average of new COVID-19 cases is falling in only four states and rising in 31, ­although President Donald Trump has insisted that there are more cases because of more testing. He tweeted last week that “Coronavirus deaths are way down. Mortality rate is one of the lowest in the World”.

The US is fifth in the world for deaths as a ratio of recorded cases, at 4.9 per cent, in a chart compiled by Johns Hopkins University. On deaths per 100,000 people, the US is second on 38.45, behind Britain on 65.63.

Dr Fauci said he was optimistic that a vaccine would be available by February but it might not be completely effective.

“The best we’ve ever done is measles, which is 97 to 98 per cent effective,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said.

“That would be wonderful if we get there. I don’t think we will. I would settle for 70, 75 per cent ­effective vaccine.”

About 70 per cent of Americans said they planned to have a coronavirus vaccine if it was free, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll this month. About two-thirds agreed in a CNN poll.

Asked whether a vaccine that is 70 to 75 per cent effective and given to two-thirds of the country would create herd immunity, Dr Fauci said: “No, unlikely.

“There is a general anti-­science, anti-authority, anti-vaccine feeling among some people in this country — an alarmingly large percentage of people, relatively speaking.”

AFP, The Times