Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the World Health Organization’s emergency program, said this week that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic – including two most easily transmitted strains of the deadly virus – “is not necessarily the biggest” when considering possibly future pandemics worse.
The new variants are called B.1.1.7 and 501.V2 and, according to reports, may affect the current course of the pandemic.
What are the details?
According to Newsweek, Ryan said the COVID-19 pandemic “is not necessarily the biggest”.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic is “very serious”, the worst may not have happened yet.
Ryan, who made the comments during a briefing on Monday, said: “This pandemic has been very severe, it has spread across the world extremely quickly, it has affected all corners of the planet. But this is not necessarily the big one.”
He added: “This virus is very transmissible … it kills people and deprives many people of their loved ones. But its current lethality is reasonably low compared to other emerging diseases. This is a warning.”
Ryan pointed out that the planet is in a “fragile” state and global society is becoming “increasingly complex”.
“These threats will continue,” he warned. “If there is one thing that we need to get out of this pandemic with all the tragedy and loss, it is that we need to act together, we need to prepare for something that could be even more serious in the future. We must honor those we have lost by improving in what we do every day. . “
What else?
According to Newsweek, more than a dozen countries worldwide have reported cases of COVID-19 caused by the new, in relation to variants, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Holland, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
“None of the strains were detected in the United States, but last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States said the United Kingdom variant ‘could already be in the United States without being detected,'” the vehicle said.
On Monday, Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center, told CNBC that the variant may only have been overlooked in the United States due to its current testing capacity.
“To find this strain, what we need to do is take a percentage of the samples that are diagnosed and do in-depth genetic analyzes, and [in] in the US, our capacity has not been spectacular, “she explained, pointing to a CDC report from early December.
“If the strain is here, we can simply lose it because the holes in our network are very large,” explained Bhadelia.