Most of the world’s population will have to wait for a coronavirus vaccine for about three years.
The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will become endemic, that is, permanent, and will continue to mutate, which means that the next epidemic may be more serious than the current one, the World Health Organization said.
Herd immunity, a healthy population and control measures will allow humanity to live with the virus, the WHO says. However, many countries will have to wait until 2024 for a vaccine.
Coronavirus forever
The goal of the coronavirus, which led to the 2020 pandemic, is to move towards endemics, said World Health Organization expert Professor David Heymann, the Guardian newspaper writes.
According to him, COVID-19, like the other four human coronaviruses, will become endemic, that is, permanent in the human population. At the same time, SARS-CoV-2 will continue to mutate as it multiplies in human cells.
“It (the virus – ed.) will continue to mutate as it multiplies in human cells, especially in places with more intensive spread,” Heimann said.
The expert believes that today humanity has all the tools to save human lives. In his opinion, herd immunity, a healthy population and control measures will allow people to live with this virus.
WHO spokesman Mark Ryan is also confident that the coronavirus will become endemic. He warned that the next epidemic could be worse than the current one.
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“We live in an increasingly complex world. These threats will persist. If there is anything we need to learn from this pandemic, with all its tragedies and losses, is to work together,” said a WHO spokesman.
However, he said the coronavirus would not pose much of a threat if vaccinations were effective. At the same time, in his opinion, the virus is unlikely to completely disappear even with an effective vaccine.
On Sunday, December 27, almost all EU countries began the largest mass vaccination in history. The day the first vaccine was vaccinated, developed by Biontech and Pfizer, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called V-day (Vaccine Day) and a “touching moment of unity”.
The European Union plans to vaccinate most of the bloc’s population by the summer. In early December, Britain, the United States, Canada and Russia began immunizing the population against coronavirus infection. In the less developed countries, however, the situation is not so rosy.
The German edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung writes that two-thirds of the world’s population will have to wait about three years for a vaccine.
It’s scary to see rich countries getting vaccines while African countries have to give them up, said John Nkengasong, head of African John Nkengasong.
Back in the summer, WHO pointed to the problem, citing “alarming signs” that African states would be the last in line from countries waiting for the vaccine.
States, which account for only 14 per cent of the world’s population, have booked 51 per cent of all vaccine doses as of mid-last month, according to a study published in the scientific journal British Medical Journal.
The Red Cross warns that some 60 million people in regions of war and conflict may not be vaccinated at all.
The WHO COVAX Vaccine Guarantee Initiative should ensure that 21 per cent of people are vaccinated by the end of 2021. However, according to internal documents, there is a great risk of COVAX failure.
Poor nations, which means billions of people, probably won’t get the vaccine until 2024. The reasons, among other things, can be agreements and complex logistics.