The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 could become endemic
like HIV, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, warning
against any attempt to predict how long it would keep circulating and
calling for a “massive effort” to counter it.
“It is important to
put this on the table: this virus may become just another endemic virus
in our communities, and this virus may never go away,” WHO emergencies
expert Mike Ryan told an online briefing.
“I think it is
important we are realistic and I don’t think anyone can predict when
this disease will disappear,” he added. “I think there are no promises
in this and there are no dates. This disease may settle into a long
problem, or it may not be.”
However, he said the world had some
control over how it coped with the disease, although this would take a
“massive effort” even if a vaccine was found — a prospect he described
as a “massive moonshot”.
More than 100 potential vaccines are
being developed, including several in clinical trials, but experts have
underscored the difficulties of finding vaccines that are effective
against coronaviruses.
Ryan noted that vaccines exist for other illnesses, such as measles, that have not been eliminated.
WHO
Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus added: “The trajectory is
in our hands, and it’s everybody’s business, and we should all
contribute to stop this pandemic.”
Ryan said “very significant
control” of the virus was required in order to lower the assessment of
risk, which he said remained high at the “national, regional and global
levels”.
Governments around the world are struggling with the
question of how to reopen their economies while still containing the
virus, which has infected almost 4.3 million people, according to a
Reuters tally, and led to over 291,000 deaths.
The European Union
pushed on Wednesday for a gradual reopening of borders within the bloc
that have been shut by the pandemic, saying it was not too late to
salvage some of the summer tourist season while still keeping people
safe.
But
public health experts say extreme caution is needed to avoid new
outbreaks. Ryan said opening land borders was less risky than easing air
travel, which was a “different challenge”.
“We need to get into
the mindset that it is going to take some time to come out of this
pandemic,” WHO epidemiologist Maria van Kerkhove told the briefing.
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