[ad_1]
The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that a large portion of the world’s population will likely have to wait until 2022 to get vaccinated against covid-19, despite scientific advances. The message was issued today by the organization, which insists that there will not be enough production capacity to supply the world with vaccines immediately.
According to the agency, the priority will be to guarantee the vaccine to health professionals, the elderly and people with vulnerable conditions. Together, these groups do not represent even 20% of the population of the countries.
“For an ordinary, young and healthy person, it may be necessary to wait until 2022 to receive the vaccine,” said the entity’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan. For her, the world should have a vaccine in 2021, but it will be “in limited quantity.”
Soumya indicates that the hope is that by vaccinating a part of the population, the mortality rate will be reduced and transmission will be reduced.
No one has ever produced vaccines in that quantity, “he said.” Not that, on January 1, 2021, we will all be vaccinated and life will return to normal.
Soumya Swaminathan, WHO Chief Scientist
According to her, for the vaccine to generate herd immunity, 70% of the world population will have to receive the product, about 5 billion people. At that point, the chain of transmission would be interrupted.
WHO tries to curb a climate that has passed the pandemic
Behind the scenes, high-level WHO sources indicated that Soumya’s message aims to stop the climate and the narrative among certain governments that containment measures may be abandoned as the vaccine is close at hand.
At the agency, the real hope is that positive vaccine-related test results will be announced before the end of the year and that by 2021, these first groups will be immunized. But by the end of next year, the goal is for the largest vaccination campaign in history to reach 2 billion people, far less than half of the planet’s population, estimated today at 7.7 billion people.
Maria van Kerkhove, technical director of the WHO, insists that the world does not have to wait for the vaccine for everyone to guarantee control of the virus. “Today we have instruments to prevent transmission [da covid-19]”Said the American, who highlights how governments in different parts of the world have managed to maintain low levels of contamination, even without the vaccine.
“This is a virus that we can control,” he insisted.
Countries should go through the second wave in a more prepared way
According to the WHO, the “big jump” in the number of cases in recent days may be followed, in the coming weeks, by an increase in the number of deaths.
But the hope is that, with more trained doctors and some treatments with results for more severe cases, the death rate will not be the same as the peak of the disease between March and April. Another factor that may weigh is the fact that people are being diagnosed earlier and that the portion of the population most affected is now younger.
Still, Soumya insists that the world cannot take a position of complacency. “We still lose 5,000 people a day,” he warned.
The WHO also said that it “never recommended” a complete blockade of countries and that it has always insisted that packages of measures are needed to overcome the pandemic.
“We do not recommend blocking,” Maria said. However, he admits that some countries needed to “buy time” to relieve their health systems, saturated with cases and overcrowded ICUs. “Some countries had no other option,” he explained.
He hopes that, given the second wave of the disease, governments will opt for localized measures, with actions focused on the most affected regions.
