‘The big’: WHO warns future pandemics could be worse than coronavirus – National

The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 1.7 million people, destroyed economies and pushed hospitals to the brink of collapse.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the pandemic, despite its seriousness, is not ‘necessarily the big one’.

The head of the WTO emergency program, dr. Mark Ryan, at a media conference on Monday, said that if we have to take one thing away from this pandemic, that ‘we need to get ready for something that could be worse in the future. ”

“This pandemic was very severe, it spread very fast all over the world and affected every corner of this planet,” Ryan said. ‘But it’s not necessarily the big one. This virus is very contagious and kills people, it has deprived so many people of loved ones. But the lethal mortality rate of this is quite low compared to other emerging diseases. This is a wake-up call. ‘

READ MORE: Next pandemic will be ‘more harmful’ if lessons are not learned from COVID-19, says the panel

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He added that the threats will continue, and because our planet is so ‘fragile’, we need to learn from the coronavirus pandemic and ‘recover’.

Ryan also said that there is a possibility of never eradicating COVID-19 – despite the recent introduction of safe vaccines.

“The likely scenario is that the virus will become another endemic virus that will remain somewhat threatening, but a very low level threat in the context of an effective global vaccination program,” he said.

“It remains to be seen how well the vaccines are absorbed, how close we get to a coverage level that gives us the opportunity to eliminate,” he said. “The existence of a vaccine, even at high efficacy, is no guarantee of the eradication or eradication of an infectious disease,” he said.

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Coronavirus: WHO official says the next few months will be difficult despite the vaccine being approved

The warning comes more than two weeks after an extremely contagious variant of the coronavirus was announced by the British government.

On December 26, Canada reported its first two cases of the coronavirus variant found in the United Kingdom. The variant has also spread to Australia, Japan and several European countries.

The WHO said earlier that the newly authorized vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna, should still work against the new coronavirus variant.

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