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It may be four to five years before the coronavirus pandemic is under control, warned a senior official at the World Health Organization (WHO).
Chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said key factors in defeating Covid-19 in the long term include whether the virus matures, containment measures in place and, crucially, the development of a vaccine.
The UK is at the forefront of international efforts to develop such a treatment, although Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned this week that one may never be found. Ms. Swaminathan said that a vaccine “seems for now the best way out,” but there were “many” ifs and “buts” about its efficacy and safety, as well as its production and fair distribution.
“I would say that within four to five years, we could be trying to control this,” he said at the Financial Times Global Boardroom digital conference.
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When asked about the comments during the WHO quarterly meeting from Geneva, Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the organization’s health emergencies program, said that no one could predict when the disease would disappear.
But he also issued a warning about reducing the blockade without proper monitoring and tracking measures in place, adding: “We should not wait to see if the opening of the blockades has worked by counting the bodies in the morgue.”
Globally there are more than 4.3 million confirmed coronavirus cases, with the death toll now reaching 300,000.
Dr. Ryan said it is actually a “relatively low” number when it comes to society building some form of collective immunity.
He said: ‘What is clear, and I think perhaps what Soumya could have been alluding to, is that the current number of people in our population who have been infected is actually relatively low.
‘If you are a scientist, and project forward in the absence of a vaccine, and try to calculate” how long will it take for enough people to become infected for this disease to become an endemic trace “? It is important to put this on the table: this virus can become another endemic virus in our communities. And this virus may never go away. ”
Dr. Ryan said that an effective vaccine was the “great hope” to beat Covid-19 quickly, but that this brought many challenges in terms of manufacturing and distribution worldwide.
‘If we find a highly effective vaccine that we can distribute to everyone in need around the world, we may have a chance to get rid of this virus.
“But that vaccine will have to be highly effective, it must be available to everyone and we will have to use it,” he said.
Citing unvaccinated populations for diseases like measles, he continued: “Forgive me if I am cynical. But we do have some perfectly effective vaccines on this planet that we have not used effectively for diseases that we could eliminate and eradicate and that we have not done.
“We have lacked the will, we have lacked the determination to invest in health systems to achieve that.”
The WHO chief said discovering a coronavirus vaccine presents “a massive opportunity for the world” to address these global health inequalities.
He added: ‘The idea that a new disease could arise, cause a pandemic, and we could, with a massive shot to the moon, find a vaccine and give it to all who need it and stop this disease on their way, maybe they will. what has happened has been a tragic pandemic, a beacon of hope for the future of our planet and the way we care for our citizens. ‘
Scientists around the world are competing to discover effective coronavirus treatments, as the blockade threatens a global recession worse than the 2008 financial crisis and even the Great Depression.
Boris Johnson eased the restrictions in England today in a move that sparked backlash from critics like Nicola Sturgeon, who says the risk is still too high. An NHS contact tracking app was launched this week on the Isle of Wight, but so far only 40% of the population has downloaded it.
In warning of the possible deadly consequences of the UK approach, Dr. Ryan said that governments considering lifting the blockade should have effective surveillance to monitor transmission of the disease.
He said: ‘If the transmission of that virus speeds up and you don’t have the systems to detect it, it will be days or weeks before you know that something went wrong. And by the time that happens, you will return to a situation where your only answer is another block.
‘And I think this is what we all fear: a vicious cycle of public health disaster, followed by economic disaster, followed by public health disaster, followed by economic disaster.
‘We should not be waiting to see if the opening of the closings has worked counting the cases in the ICU (intensive care units), or counting the bodies in the morgue, that is not the way to know that something went wrong
‘The way to know that the disease is coming back is to have community-based surveillance, run tests and know that the problem is coming back, and then be able to adjust your public health measures accordingly.
‘Let’s not go back to a situation where we don’t know what’s going on until our hospitals overflow. That’s not a good way to do business. “
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