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The world will face a “brutal” experience during the winter months with Covid-19, but the corner will be turned next March, a public health expert said.
Professor Devi Sridhar told MacGill Summer School that people need to hang on, heed public health advice, and things will get better in the spring.
There are 11 vaccines in testing and she said she was very confident that a viable vaccine will be available in the first months of 2021.
Professor Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh and an advisor to the Scottish government on Covid-19.
She told the school in a video interview that the current public anger over the restrictions and longevity of the virus is understandable, but better times are ahead.
She outlined four reasons for optimism that humanity will eventually control the virus.
The first is that the medical profession knows much more about the virus and how it is transmitted than it did nine months ago when the pandemic began.
Governments can adapt public advice accordingly.
There are now more options for testing with antigen tests that allow for faster tests that will help the public control the virus and pave the way for normal life to resume.
The use of Dexamethasone, a cheap and widely available steroid, has helped save many lives, but there are challenges in providing better treatments for people with long-term Covid-19, he added.
“I have high hopes for the world starting in March. Next spring we will be in a very good place, ”he said.
“The next four months are going to be very tough. People need to realize that the next four months are going to be really brutal, but there is light.
“If we can make it to March, we will be in a profoundly different situation than we are now.”
He said governments will have the opportunity to use the vaccine and rapid tests to form a strategy based on the latest data and to use the summer months to “form a game plan with this virus.”
He said that people needed to realize that Covid-19 is a “one-in-a-century kind of event” that won’t last forever.
Better scientific data on immunity, Covid-19 morbidity and a licensed vaccine are likely next spring, he predicted.
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