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The coronavirus may never go away and populations will have to learn to live with it just as they have HIV, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned, as the global death toll was about to cross the 300,000 mark. .
Currently, more than 100 laboratories and universities are working 24 hours a day to develop a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus behind the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the WHO said the virus can never be completely removed.
“This virus can become another endemic virus in our communities and this virus will never go away,” said Michael Ryan, director of emergencies for the global health body in Geneva.
“HIV has not disappeared, but we have come to terms with the virus.”
The uncertainty surrounding the virus causes governments around the world to split over policies aimed at protecting the health of their populations and measures to save the economy, at the risk of being affected by too many protective restrictions.
Unacceptable
In the United States, President Donald Trump, who faces elections in November, has been pushing for a rapid resumption of economic activity, often against the advice of health officials.
Chief infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said reopening too soon runs the risk of triggering uncontrollable outbreaks, but the president on Wednesday rejected the caution call as “not acceptable.”
The United States recorded more than 1,800 deaths on Wednesday, bringing the nation’s total to 84,059.
Meanwhile, Australia released figures showing nearly 600,000 people lost their jobs when the country’s virus shutdown took hold in April, the biggest monthly drop in jobs since records began more than 40 years ago.
Trip Restart
Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the number “terribly shocking.”
And in Europe, the reopening of economies continued across Europe, with officials pushing ahead with plans to restore summer tourism despite fears of a second wave of infections persisting.
Desperate to save millions of jobs, the European Union put forward proposals for a gradual restart of travel, with border controls eventually to be lifted, along with measures to minimize transmission.
Some beaches reopened in France on Wednesday, but only for swimming and fishing, and people in England were allowed to leave their homes more freely.
Jump in cases
The return to normality was also accelerated in Asia with Japan ready to lift a state of emergency, although not yet in the capital, Tokyo, and other major cities.
With infections severely diminished, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to ease restrictions in up to 39 of the country’s 47 prefectures.
However, in Latin America the virus continued to rise, with a jump of 60 percent in cases in the Chilean capital of Santiago, which led the authorities to impose a total blockade on the city.
In Argentina, officials watched Buenos Aires cautiously after one of its poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods showed an increase in infections.
(with cables)
