Covid-19 is brutal in its simplicity and cruelty, but there are things that can be done to outsmart it, according to World Health Organization officials.
“When we talk about what the virus is trying to do and the virus is an enemy, the virus has no brains. We are doing it with the brains, ”said Dr Mike Ryan, Director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, at a news conference in Geneva on Monday.
Ryan described the virus as a simple biological entity that can enter a human cell and instruct that cell to make more viruses, which can infect at least someone else; if at least kill the person.
‘It’s brutal in its simplicity. It’s brutal in its cruelty, “Ryan said. ‘But it has no brains. We have the brains. And I think Mary might be sketching how we can overwork something that has no brains, but we are not doing such a great job at the moment. ‘
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for coronavirus, elaborated on how this could be done, saying that the aim of the virus is to reproduce, to find individuals to go through, but not to kill too much, in order to it is unable to pass on to another person if it kills its host.
“There are many, many things we can do now with the tools we have at the moment to overcome this virus,” she said.
While work on therapeutics and vaccines will continue, at this point chains of transmission could be broken, she said.
These include social distance, contact tracing, quarantining infected individuals, using masks when physical distance is not possible, and hand washing.
“If we do all these things, we can survive the virus, and we can prevent this virus from passing from one individual to another,” she said, adding that everyone on the planet needs to understand that they must play a role in breaking chain of transmission.
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