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It takes about five years to take control of the global situation with the spread of the coronavirus.
The World Health Organization warned that the coronavirus may remain with the human population forever, and the prospect of controlling the spread of the infection will appear in a few years. Correspondent.net tell the details
The world will never be the same
It takes about five years to take control of the global situation with the spread of the coronavirus.
“I would say that in four or five years we will have the possibility of control,” said WHO Sumy Swaminathan, WHO assistant director-general, at a conference organized by the Financial Times.
The exact period depends on many factors: whether the virus will mutate when an effective vaccine is developed, and also how long and long the quarantine will be in different countries.
The head of the WHO emergency program, Mike Ryan, in turn, admitted that the coronavirus will never go away.
“It is important to say clearly: this virus can become another endemic virus in our society. It can never disappear. HIV has not disappeared. We live with it, we have found ways to treat and prevent it, people are no longer as afraid as before and many HIV-positive lead long and healthy lives, “said the expert.
He noted that in the case of SARS-CoV-2, promises and dates cannot be made, as it can become a long-term problem, but it probably is not.
The WHO Department of Mental Health sent a report to the UN warning of another impending crisis.
“Isolation, fear, uncertainty, economic turmoil – all of this can cause psychological stress. The crisis negatively affected the mental health and well-being of entire societies,” said Deborah Kestel, director of the department.
Commenting on the epidemic in several countries in late April, WHO chief Tedros Adan Gebreisus said the world’s coronavirus pandemic is far from over.
“We have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time. Citizens of countries where quarantine measures are implemented are clearly upset that they have not left their home for several weeks. But the world will not be the same.” said.
Gebreisus noted an alarming increase in the number of infections in Africa, Central and South America, as well as in Eastern Europe. A new outbreak of the disease can start at any time, he warned then.
Last weekend, several countries, which eased quarantine restrictions earlier this month, are already seeing an increase in disease, including in China. This is described in detail in Wuhan 2.0: a new wave of COVID in the winning countries.
Regarding the seasonality of viral infections, this phenomenon remains a mystery to scientists, says William Hazeltai, an American biotechnologist and expert in infectious diseases.
Viruses like influenza and coronaviruses are thought to peak in winter by some people because cold, dry weather dries up the mucous membrane, increasing our vulnerability to viral infections. Still others believe that in winter we often meet indoors, simplifying the infection process.
These theories seem compelling exactly until you see other viruses peaking in the summer, for example, polio and rhinoviruses that cause respiratory infections.
“If you limit the number of infections today, the number of people infected will decrease in the future,” he writes on the pages of Project Syndicate.
How to beat a coronavirus
There are still two ways to defeat a pandemic, according to most experts: developing a vaccine or developing collective immunity.
It is true that many discuss the latter option, as immunity to the coronavirus has not yet been studied. It is assumed that the development of collective immunity requires that 60-70 percent of the population be ill with the coronavirus.
Around 150 preparations for coronavirus and 80 vaccines are currently being developed worldwide, however, no country has yet entered the second phase of its clinical trials.
Most hopes are associated with the vaccine, said WHO’s Deputy Director-General, but many risk factors are associated with its development, use, efficacy and safety. Mass production and distribution will be a problem, he added.
The European Medicines Agency said that, according to the most optimistic estimates, the coronavirus vaccine will appear in about a year. The agency’s chief Marco Cavaleri said he was skeptical of some statements that the development will be completed in September.
But the vaccine may not make sense because of the virus’s ability to mutate. According to a recent article published in the American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, today there are three types of coronaviruses, which depend on the immunity characteristics of various population groups.
Chinese academic Zhong Nanshan also said that the new virus, through mutation, adapts to the human environment and becomes more contagious.
Pandemics in history
A pandemic is the massive spread of an infectious disease in many countries that is easily transmitted from person to person.
In modern times, humanity has experienced various pandemics. In 1918-1919, the flu, called the Spanish flu, spread throughout the world from Spain. Then more than 500 million people became ill, 20 million to 50 million died.
This is the most massive pandemic in human history in terms of the number of deaths. The Spanish woman claimed more lives than the First World War on the battlefield.
In the years 1957-1958, the H2N2 virus caused a pandemic, after 20% to 50% of the world population suffered from one million to four million people. Very often, the flu affects children.
The last pandemic was announced in 2009-2010 due to the swine flu. It belongs to the most common type A influenza and combines the subtypes H1N1 (the most common), H1N2, H3N1, H3N2 and H2N3.
According to the WHO, the pandemic reached 30 percent of the world population in 214 countries and killed 18,449 people.
Coronaviruses never became a pandemic. In 2002, an outbreak of the precursor to the Wuhan SARS coronavirus, a severe acute respiratory syndrome that develops into SARS, occurred. In this outbreak, around eight thousand cases were registered in 30 countries with 774 deaths.
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The study, which examined doctors who had SARS, suggests that although their blood levels dropped in the early years, they could still be detected even after 12 years. This gives hope, since the new coronavirus is a relative of SARS.
The outbreak of MERS respiratory syndrome in the Middle East occurred in 2012 in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. As of 2018, 2,144 cases of infection with this coronavirus were registered in 27 countries. The virus mortality is approximately 30 percent.
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