The chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO), Soumya Swaminathan, said this Friday (11) that the world is not yet at the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, as more variants of the coronavirus will emerge.
“We’ve seen the virus evolve, mutate… so we know there will be more variants, more variants of concern, so we’re not at the end of the pandemic,” Swaminathan told reporters in South Africa, where she was visiting vaccine manufacturing facilities with the virus. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
WHO members have frequently commented on the expectations of a near end to the pandemic, a theory raised after the emergence of the Ômicron variant and its consequent advance in a context of greater vaccination in the world.
The director of the WHO in Europe, Hans Kluge, said that this “ceasefire” has conditions. According to him, it is necessary to “consolidate and preserve immunity by maintaining vaccination and reinforcement”, with “a focus on the five stabilizers for the most vulnerable, such as strong supervision and government commitment, promoting self-protection and individual responsibility behaviors and intensifying surveillance to detect new diseases”. variants”.
Kluge also endorses that the emergence of new mutations of SARS-COV-2 must occur and that, therefore, it is necessary to promote greater equalization of vaccines around the world.
“This calls for a drastic and uncompromising increase in vaccine sharing across borders. We cannot continue to accept vaccine inequality. Vaccines should be for everyone,” he said.
Source: CNN Brasil