Three years ago, the Covid-19 pandemic caused widespread chaos in the world. but The Corona pandemic is not over yet While the researchers warn of other epidemics that may spread, they stress the need to draw lessons from the ensuing crisis to better prepare in the future.
Will the pandemic end soon?
The World Health Organization warned in early December that the Corona pandemic is not over yet. And while at least 90% of the world’s population enjoys relative immunity, its Director-General Tedros Adhanom Gebresius pointed out that there are “flaws in monitoring, examinations, genome identification and vaccination, which provide ideal conditions.” For the emergence of a new worrisome mutant that may cause a percentage Great deaths.”
Corona examinations in China due to the high number of infections
The World Health Organization is the party authorized to declare the end of a pandemic. In this context, Philippe Sansonetti, a microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute, said during a forum last Wednesday: “This is a very important and often controversial moment,” considering that the organization is not ready to “declare the end” of the Corona pandemic yet.
Experts expect the pandemic to gradually transform into an endemic virus that continues to spread and cause a regular outbreak of infections, and this is what is happening now with measles or seasonal influenza.
Can this disease ever be eradicated?
This is unlikely. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, which spread globally in 2003 and caused the death of about 800 people, was contained thanks to isolation and quarantine measures.
The smallpox virus was previously “eradicated” in 1980 thanks to a vaccination campaign led by the World Health Organization.
However, this scenario remains rare. Philippe Sansonetti stressed that “the elimination of a virus means that the disease must be clinically apparent and there should be no animal host, and a highly effective vaccine that protects for life should be provided. However, Covid-19 does not meet any of these conditions.”
On the one hand, people with corona often do not show symptoms, which negatively affects isolation procedures. Unlike smallpox, the virus is transmitted to animals and may continue to spread among them and infect humans again.
In addition, vaccines protect against Dangerous forms of the disease, but little protection from infection again, and there is a need to obtain enhanced vaccine doses.
What are the main risks ahead?
For his part, said Etienne Simon Laurier, director of the Evolutionary Genomics Unit for “ARN” viruses at the “Institut Pasteur”: “These days viruses are left to circulate very much,” whenever they infect a person, new mutations can appear and may cause relatively strong forms of the disease.
“There is no reason for us to think that the virus will become kinder, although this belief works for everyone,” he warned.
One of those infected with Corona in intensive care in a Turkish hospital last year
Other viruses that strike the respiratory system may appear. Since the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and Covid, “we have detected about ten coronaviruses in bats that may be transmitted to humans,” Arnaud Fontanet, an expert in emerging diseases at the Pasteur Institute, revealed.
It is noteworthy that 60% to 70% of emerging diseases are of animal origin, meaning that they are transmitted naturally from vertebrate animals to humans and vice versa.
As humans occupy larger areas of the world and through travel and intensified interaction with animals, humans contribute to changing the ecosystem and facilitating the transmission of viruses.
How do we prepare?
Arnaud Votanet saw that “a lot can and should be done at the beginning of any epidemic.” In 2020, Denmark decided to lock down early, which allowed it to get out of it faster.
The researcher said that it is also necessary to “have the ability to develop tests very early” at the beginning of the epidemic, which facilitates the isolation of patients very quickly, “but unfortunately today we are still responding and not anticipating,” as he put it.
At the international level, the concept of “One Health” (one health) that emerged at the turn of the current millennium is being re-introduced and calls for a global approach to health stakes with a close link between human and animal health and the environment.
Last week, a draft global agreement on managing pandemics was discussed in Geneva, hoping to avoid the mistakes that characterized the fight against Covid-19.