Reported By:| Edited By: |Source: AP/PTI |Updated: Jan 19, 2022, 08:03 AM IST
The head of emergencies at the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic – deaths, hospitalisations and lockdowns – could be over this year if huge inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed quickly.
Dr Michael Ryan, speaking during a panel discussion on vaccine equity hosted by the World Economic Forum, said, “we may never end the virus” because such pandemic viruses “end up becoming part of the ecosystem.”
But “we have a chance to end the public health emergency this year if we do the things that we’ve been talking about,” he said.
WHO has slammed the imbalance in COVID-19 vaccination between rich and poor countries as a catastrophic moral failure. Fewer than 10% of people in lower-income countries have received one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Ryan told the virtual gathering of world and business leaders that if vaccines and other tools aren’t shared fairly, the tragedy of the virus, which has so far killed more than 5.5 million people worldwide, would continue.
“What we need to do is get too low levels of disease incidence with maximum vaccination of our populations, so nobody has to die,” Ryan said.
“The issue is: It’s the death. It’s the hospitalizations. It’s the disruption of our social, economic, political systems that’s caused the tragedy, not the virus.”
Ryan also waded into the growing debate about whether COVID-19 should be considered endemic, a label some countries like Spain have called for to help better live with the virus, or still a pandemic involving intensified measures that many countries have taken to fight the spread.
“Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities. Endemic in itself does not mean good. Endemic just means it’s here forever,” he said.
Public health officials have warned it is highly unlikely COVID-19 will be eliminated and say it will continue to kill people, though at much lower levels, even after it becomes endemic.
