A top official of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that the coronavirus pandemic is unlikely to end completely in 2021, but noted that deaths and hospitalizations should decrease drastically by the end of the year due to widespread access to vaccines .
The Associated Press reports that Michael Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergency program, told reporters in London that it was ‘premature’ and ‘unrealistic’ to think that COVID-19 would disappear in 2021.
“If we are smart, we can finish the hospitalizations and the deaths and the tragedy associated with this pandemic,” Ryan said.
“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,” he said according to the AP added.
In his own remarks, WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus allegedly chastised richer countries, including the US, for providing vaccines to the WHO’s COVAX effort in poorer countries after vaccination programs in their own countries were well under way.
“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. ‘
The Trump administration withdrew the US from COVAX last year, but the US re-entered it President Biden
Joe BidenBiden supports union organizing efforts Senate Democrats nix ‘Plan B’ on raising minimum wage Kavanaugh upsets conservatives by evading Trump election proceedings MORE accepted his office in January. Earlier this month, Biden added that he had committed $ 4 billion to the effort.
“This pandemic is not going to end if we do not end it worldwide,” a senior administration official told reporters earlier in February. “In addition to saving many lives … it is also the right thing to do to form an international security and economic perspective.”
The U.S. has currently approved three vaccines against COVID-19 for emergency use, the most recent addition to the list is one manufactured by Johnson & Johnson, the first coronavirus vaccine available in the United States.