‘The big one’: WHO warns that future pandemics may be worse than coronavirus – National

The coronavirus pandemic killed more than 1.7 million people, destroyed economies and brought hospitals to the brink of collapse.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that, despite the severity, the pandemic is not “necessarily the big one”.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday, WHO’s emergency program chief, Dr. Mark Ryan, said that if there is anything to take from this pandemic, it is that “we need to prepare for something that could be more serious in the future. “

“This pandemic was very severe, it spread across the world extremely quickly and affected every corner of the planet,” said Ryan. “But this is not necessarily the big problem. This virus is very transmissible and kills people, as it deprived so many people of loved ones. But its current mortality is reasonably low compared to other emerging diseases. This is a wake-up call. “

READ MORE: The next pandemic will be “more damaging” if lessons are not learned from COVID-19, says the panel

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He added that the threats will continue and, as our planet is so “fragile”, we must learn from the coronavirus pandemic and “act together”.

Ryan also said there was a possibility that he would never eradicate COVID-19 – despite the recent launch of safe vaccines.

“The likely scenario is that the virus will become another endemic virus that will remain somewhat of a threat, but a very low-level threat in the context of an effective global vaccination program,” he said.

“It remains to be seen how well vaccines are taken, how close we come to a level of coverage that can give us the opportunity to go for elimination,” he said. “The existence of a vaccine, even with high efficacy, is not a guarantee of eliminating or eradicating an infectious disease,” he said.

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Coronavirus: WHO official says the next few months ‘will be difficult’ despite vaccine approval

The warning comes more than two weeks after a highly contagious coronavirus variant was announced by the British government.

On December 26, Canada reported the first two cases of the coronavirus variant that was found in the United Kingdom. The variant has also spread to Australia, Japan and several European countries.

The WHO said earlier that newly authorized vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna should still work against the new coronavirus variant.

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