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While promising and rapid vaccine development projects are underway in China, Europe and the United States, only the best optimists hope that an effective vaccine will be offered to the world later this year.
If, according to most experts, an effective vaccine is not available in 2021, we will all have to co-exist with coronavirus next year or even longer without a ‘magic bullet’. And this next phase of the crisis may require us to reshape our expectations and perceptions and adjust behavior, say public health professionals.
According to experts, the definition of success is not limited to a return to a normal rhythm of life. It is now crucial to buy time and use perseverance and policy flexibility to curb the devastating potential of an expanding pandemic and thus prevent another million victims until medical devices are finally discovered to provide effective treatment and a vaccine against the disease. virus.
“People are tired. They mistakenly think that it’s all over, “said Cameron Wolfe, an infectious disease doctor and associate professor of medicine at Duke University.” We need to find ways to live with it. “
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that threats vary from district to district, let alone from different countries. Much depends on the scale of local outbreaks and the effectiveness of tests, contact tracing, social isolation, information from hospital systems and public health systems, without distorting the political nuances.
Leaders such as the President of the United States, Donald Trump, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, or the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonar, have faced a decrease in the ratings, partly due to the high prevalence of infection and the high mortality from COVID-19, a virus-borne disease.
In many cases, messages from higher levels of government seem to contradict expert recommendations or overshadow instructions from government agencies. All of this creates confusion and mistrust, and requires a look at public health information through the prism of bias.
Not all the news is sad. In the first half of this year, governments around the world resorted to urgent measures, such as forced closings of businesses, rules of permanence at home and the prohibition of large demonstrations. Such actions slowed the spread of the infection, saved lives, and gave leaders time to store medical equipment and supplies.
However, progress has come at the cost of dire consequences, such as economic contraction, rising unemployment, and trillion-dollar fiscal and monetary stimulus. Governments in the hair since the disaster are unlikely to be inclined to resort to large-scale quarantine again.
By contrast, the larger economies will continue to open, even if the situation is uneven. This in turn means more social movement and more opportunities for the virus to spread. Researchers watching trends in the spread of the virus are already seeing signs that the opening of economies is driving the rise in infections.
“I understand the need to balance these important economic factors,” said Ada Adimora, an infectious disease professor and epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “But opening up social life and letting people go to restaurants (you didn’t wear masks when you ate) will definitely not help control the threat of the virus.”
The chances of coexisting with a new virus called SARS-CoV-2 will increasingly depend on how people assess risks and make decisions.
“No activity will be protected from the risks of the coronavirus,” said Amesh Adalja, principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins Health Center in Baltimore. “A lot will depend on the extent to which people are willing to take risks.”
The problem is that the virus spreads silently. Countries like China and South Korea have faced secondary hotspots to stem primary local outbreaks. Beijing closed its school system last week and restricted international flights after a new outbreak that spread to neighboring provinces. In Germany, which has managed to maintain much lower mortality from coronavirus than in other major European economies, new cases of infection have been identified in a slaughterhouse and apartment building in Berlin.
In the United States, the pandemic has spread to Solar Belt states, such as Florida and Arizona, after a tough fight in New York. Latin America, which avoided a serious blow at the start of the pandemic, now feels its painful accents.
Brazil, with its densely populated urban centers and rural areas and its weak health care systems, has become the new epicenter.
The increase in new cases in China and the United States shows what could happen when regions begin to lift restrictions, says Seth Berkley, executive director of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The nonprofit joins the global effort to distribute the coronavirus vaccines impartially.
“Obviously, the virus has not yet ended its path anywhere,” Berkley said in an interview. – We must humbly evaluate to what extent we can control it. Of course, if we open the doors and try to return to the normal rhythm of life on all fronts, we will soon make sure that the virus continues to spread. “
While the regional spread of the virus is growing here, it is slowing down here, in a world where 9 million have been confirmed. In cases of infection, its rate constantly increases. In early May, the number of new confirmed cases per day was approximately 88,000; it now stands at 176,000, according to data collected by John Hopkins University. According to some experts, the number of deaths from coronavirus worldwide will exceed one million.
“We could have more than a million deaths,” said Eric Topolis, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we reach a couple million or more by 2022, knowing how many vulnerable people there are.”
The resumption of election campaigns in the United States led the University of Washington Institute for Health Assessment and Measurement to increase the United States’ prognosis for death by October by 18 percent to 200,000. COVID-19 claimed 117,000 lives.
“I’m not sure how to prepare for a blow of this magnitude and seriousness,” said Carissa Etienne, director of the All-American Health Organization. “It is almost impossible to understand.”
The respite from the pandemic that Trump and experts expected in the warmer weather has not come and may never come, said Davidson Hamer, professor of global health and medicine at the Boston University School of Public Health. If people feel safe without reason, they are unlikely to wear masks and avoid large gatherings.
“It is a big concern next fall, when the universities open and everyone goes back to work, there will be more people inside and the air temperature will be colder,” said Hamer. “Ideal conditions for the recurrence of the disease”.
According to E. Topolis, the large scale of asymptomatic infections has a great impact. “It is the blackest pandemic in a hundred years,” he said. – In 1918 there were 30 percent. people who unknowingly infected themselves. Such a silent and covert spread of infection makes the situation particularly difficult. “
Drug makers are in a hurry to discover an effective treatment and vaccine. Researchers from Oxford University reported last week that dexamethasone, a low-cost and widely used anti-inflammatory drug, had improved the condition of critically ill patients with COVID-19, the first promising treatment in a few months of a pandemic to save the lives of patients with the disease.
American officials and scientists have started an accelerated program to develop a vaccine that can prevent COVID-19 by the first half of 2021, but White House health adviser Anthonis Faucis warned that it could take longer.
Possible variants of the vaccine include those developed by the biotechnology company Moderna Inc .; various Chinese programs; and a team of scientists from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca Plc, who plan to introduce the vaccine as early as September.
The World Health Organization (WHO) expects to have around $ 2 billion available by the end of next year. dose of an effective vaccine, chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan spoke at a press conference last week. But that would be enough for less than a third of the world population.
Potential future vaccines that are actually on the market may not provide long-term immunity. If SARS-CoV-2 is the same as other coronaviruses, including those that cause simple colds, people may need annual vaccinations to protect themselves against minor changes in the virus, Faucis said in a recent interview.
Without the proper vaccine, countries are doing their best to control the virus through contact tracking and targeted quarantine. Evidence is critical, but testing capacity in many countries remains insufficient to identify outbreaks, as long as they are insignificant, said David Heymann, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in charge of the response from the WHO to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003.
“It is a period of trial and error, but if you know the epidemiology and know where the virus spreads, you will be able to find a better answer,” he said.
When a pandemic turns into summer, this becomes especially evident. The virus will not “go away” without a vaccine.
“It is not an infection that can be controlled or go away,” said Adalia of Johns Hopkins University. – It is spreading between people too fast. You just need it. “
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