COVID-19 may never go away: WHO

World Health Organisation (WHO) on May 13 had warned the countries around the world that coronavirus may never go away and the world will have to learn to live with it.

WHO’s emergencies director, Michael Ryan,  informed that the new virus has entered the human population for the first time and it has become very hard to predict when we will win over it.

Coronavirus had first emerged in Wuhan, China in 2019 and has since infected more than 4.2 million people and has killed 3,00,000 people worldwide.

COVID-19 may just become another endemic:

While addressing the virtual press conference in Geneva, Michael Ryan stated that Coronavirus may just become another endemic like HIV and we would have to learn to deal with it.

As the countries around the world have gradually begun easing the lockdown restrictions which were imposed to prevent the spread of the virus, WHO warned that it may not wipe out completely.

WHO also warned that there is no guarantee that easing the restrictions will not trigger a second wave of COVID-19 infection.

WHO Chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus informed that many countries would prefer getting out of different measures but WHO will still recommend countries to be on high alert.

Development of COVID-19 vaccine:

On the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, WHO emergencies expert mentioned that more than 100 potential vaccines have been developed and many of them have been in clinical trials but the experts have been underscoring the difficulties of finding vaccines that will be effective against Coronavirus.

He further added that vaccines exist for the other illness such as measles but it still has not been entirely eliminated.

Cautions to avoid the new outbreaks:

As per Michael Ryan, very significant control of the virus was required to lower the assessment of the risk which remained high at the regional, national, and global levels.

As the European Union has been pushing to reopen the borders within the bloc for the summer tourist season, public health experts have advised extreme caution that must be taken to avoid the new outbreak. Michael Ryan further added that opening land borders involved lesser risk than easing air travel which was an entirely different challenge.