The Coronavirus ‘Maybe here to stay’

The WHO’s head of health emergencies warns the coronavirus causing COVID-19 could become a long-term threat to be managed, not one that can be eradicated.

Dr. Michael Ryan, the WHO's emergency chief since 2019, has worked on dozens of disease outbreaks including Ebola, Marburg, cholera, Shigella, SARS, and bird flu. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters

Dr. Michael Ryan said on Wednesday that the coronavirus could “become just another endemic virus in our communities.” The number of people infected by COVID-19 is comparatively low and without a vaccine, It might take years to build up sufficient immunity to it. He noted that previous novel diseases such as HIV never disappeared. Effective treatments have been developed for people to live with the virus.

According to Ryan, there is still hope for an effective vaccine to be developed but it still will be a challenge to produce the shots and distribute it worldwide.

The European Medicine Agency said a vaccine could be approved in about a year under an ‘optimistic’ scenario. As of today, there are more than 4.3 million cases of coronavirus worldwide and more than 297,000 deaths according to John Hopkins COVID-19 tracking tool.

Written By: Aldrin Gomes