Pandemic severe, but ‘not necessarily the big 1’: WHO
The novel coronavirus has already established a devastating impact around the world, but the World Health Organization warned Mon that worse pandemics could lie ahead, urging the world to get “serious” about preparedness.
“That is a wakeup call,” WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan told reporters at a briefing marking a year because the UN agency first discovered of the brand new virus spreading in China.
Since that time, Covid-19 has killed practically 1.8 million persons all over the world, out of over 80 million infected.
“This pandemic has been very severe,” Ryan acknowledged.
“It has spread around the world extremely quickly and it has influenced every corner of the planet, but this is not necessarily the big one.”
He stressed that while the virus is “incredibly transmissible, and it kills persons… its current case fatality (rate) is fairly lower in comparison to other emerging diseases.”
“We need to incomparable something that could even be more serious in the future.”
WHO senior advisor Bruce Aylward likewise cautioned that while the universe had made large scientific progress to handle the coronavirus crisis, including growing vaccines at record acceleration, it remained definately not prepared to ward off future pandemics.
“We happen to be into second and third waves of the virus and we remain not prepared to handle and manage those,” he told the briefing.
“Hence while we are better prepared… we aren't fully prepared because of this one, let by itself another one.”
