GENEVA (AP) – A senior official of the World Health Organization said on Monday that it was “premature” and “unrealistic” to think that the pandemic could be stopped by the end of the year, but that the recent arrival of effective vaccines least drastically can help reduce hospitalizations and death.
The world’s simple focus should currently be to keep the transmission of COVID-19 as low as possible, said dr. Michael Ryan, director of the WHO’s emergency program, said.
“If we are smart, we could be done with the hospitalizations and the deaths and the tragedy associated with this pandemic by the end of the year,” he said.
Ryan said the WHO was reassured by emerging data that many of the licensed vaccines appear to be helping to curb the explosive spread of the virus.
“If the vaccines not only start to affect death and not just hospitalization, but also have a significant impact on the transmission dynamics and the transmission risk, I believe we will accelerate to control this pandemic.”
But Ryan warned against complacency, saying nothing can be guaranteed in a developing epidemic.
“Right now, the virus is very much in control,” he said.
Meanwhile, the WHO Director-General said it was “regrettable” that younger and healthier adults in some rich countries were being vaccinated against the coronavirus in front of health workers at risk in developing countries.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the vaccinations offered by the UN-backed effort COVAX started this week in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, but regretted that it only happened three months after countries such as Britain, the US and Canada started vaccinating their own people. .
“Countries are not in a race with each other,” he said. ‘This is a common race against the virus. We are not asking countries to endanger their own people. We ask all countries to take part in a global effort to suppress the virus everywhere. ‘
But the WHO has no longer criticized countries that want to vaccinate younger and healthier populations, instead of donating their doses to countries that have not yet been able to protect their most vulnerable people.
“We can not tell individual countries what to do,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior WHO adviser, said.
Tedros also noted that the number of COVID-19 cases increased last week for the first time in seven weeks, after six consecutive weeks of declining numbers. He described the increase as “disappointing”, but said it was not surprising.
Tedros said the WHO was working to better understand why business was increasing, but that part of the increase appeared to be due to “relaxation of public health measures.”
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AP Medical writer Maria Cheng reported from London.
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