Two years after the virus first appeared in China, Covid is still affecting the world. (File)
Geneva:
The world could see the Covid pandemic begin to fade next year into an endemic disease just like the others with whom humanity is living, unless there are clear inequalities in access to vaccines. xin pulled it out and worse variations appeared.
Even as countries scramble to tackle a worrisome new virus variant and Europe faces a resurgence by winter, health experts say getting the pandemic under control next year is entirely possible.
All the know-how and tools needed to control the virus already exist, with a growing supply of safe and effective vaccines and new treatments becoming available.
But it remains unclear whether we will make the necessary tough choices, or let the pandemic continue to rage, potentially paving the way for a much worse situation.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s leading expert on the Covid crisis, told reporters recently: “The trajectory of this pandemic is in our hands.
Will we be able to “get to a state where we won’t control transmission by 2022? Absolutely,” she said. “We could have done it already, but we haven’t.”
A year after the first vaccine hit the market, more than 7.5 billion doses have been administered globally.
And the world is on track to produce about 24 billion doses by June – more than enough for everyone on the planet.
But severe vaccine shortages in poorer countries and resistance among some to vaccines where they are available have left countries vulnerable to new, contagious variants. transmission like Delta caused this wave after the contagion wave.
And so the scene of intubated patients in an overcrowded hospital and a long line of people scrambling to find oxygen for their loved ones continued to happen.
Images of impromptu cremation pyrees burning across the Indian delta affected by the pandemic represent the human cost of the pandemic.
Officially, more than 5.1 million people have died worldwide, although WHO says the actual number could be two to three times that number.
In the United States, still the worst-affected country with nearly 800,000 deaths, the continuous short lines of obituaries on the FacesOfCovid Twitter account include many with no interest.
“Amanda, a 36-year-old math teacher in Kentucky. Chris, a 34-year-old high school football coach in Kansas. Cherie, 40, a 7th grade reading teacher in Illinois. It’s all about the community impact of them. All deeply loved. All unvaccinated,” read a recent post.
‘Part of furniture’
Two years after the virus first appeared in China, countries are still deciding between opening up and re-imposed restrictions.
Anti-vax protests are rocking several countries in Europe, once again the epicenter of the pandemic, as new lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations emerge.
Despite such scenes, many experts believe that the pandemic phase will soon be over.
Covid will not go away completely, but will become a largely controlled circulating disease that we will learn to live with, like the flu, they said.
It will essentially “become part of the furniture,” Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine, told AFP.
Leading US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci also said a surge in vaccinations will soon bring us to a point where Covid “could occasionally go up and down in the background but it won’t dominate us the way it does now.” in”.
‘Myopic’
But the apparent inequality in access to vaccines remains a high challenge.
About 65% of people in high-income countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine, but just over 7% in low-income countries, the United Nations figures show.
Judging the imbalance as a moral outrage, WHO has called on wealthy countries to refuse to provide booster shots to fully immunized people until the vulnerable Most wounded everywhere received the first injections – but to no avail.
Health experts stress that allowing Covid to spread unabated in some places greatly increases the chance that new, more dangerous variants could emerge, putting the entire world at risk.
Focusing on such fears was the emergence last week of Omicron, a new Covid-related variant that was first detected in southern Africa.
The WHO has warned that it poses a “very high” risk globally, although it remains unclear whether it is more contagious, dangerous, or evades vaccine protections better than previous variants. .
“No one is safe until everyone is safe,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has reiterated since the start of the pandemic.
Gautam Menon, a professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University in India, agrees that it is in the rich countries’ best interests to ensure that poorer nations are also affected.
“It would be weird to think that just getting vaccinated would get them out of trouble,” he said.
Dual pandemic?
If the world fails to address the imbalance, experts warn the worst could still lie ahead.
A nightmare scenario described by the WHO envisions a Covid pandemic raging out of control amid a flurry of deadly new variants, even if a separate mosquito-borne Zika virus causes a parallel pandemic.
The confusion, misinformation and migration crisis caused by people fleeing mosquito-infested areas will reduce trust in government and science, as health systems collapse and political instability. happened afterwards.
This is one of a number of “reasonable” scenarios, according to World Health Organization emergencies director Michael Ryan.
“Dual pandemics are of particular concern, because we have one virus that’s causing the current pandemic, and many more lined up.”
WHO is urging countries to commit to a pandemic pact to help prepare for and prevent future crises.
“This is certainly not the last deadly virus we have to go through,” said Jamie Metzl, a technology and healthcare futurist.
Regardless of how the Covid situation develops, “it is clear that we can never fully discharge”.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and was automatically generated from the feed provided.)
