For Dr. Michael Ryan, in charge of the WHO program for the management of health emergencies, the covid-19 virus will become more “predictable”.
- The WHO emergency committee on Covid-19 will meet in early May to determine whether to maintain maximum alert for the pandemic.
- For Dr. Michael Ryan, in charge of the WHO health emergencies program, the virus will pass “to a phase of low incidence with potential peaks, in particular when in certain seasons people find themselves indoors” .
- According to him, the SARS-CoV-2 virus will not be eliminated.
Many of us hope so… but unfortunately, the COVID-19 virus is not going to disappear from our lives. For the WHO, SARS-CoV-2 and its variants will remain active. However, their circulation should become more predictable.
COVID-19: a more predictable pattern in the future
The World Health Organization (WHO) emergency committee on Covid-19 will meet in early May to determine whether to maintain the maximum alert for the coronavirus, decreed on January 30, 2020. Dr. Michael Ryan, head of WHO’s health emergencies programme, told a press conference on April 18 that he hoped to be able to give “positive tips” to the head of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom, at the end of this meeting assessing the pandemic situation.
However, he warned that “you don’t turn off a switch to automatically go into an endemic situation. It is much more likely that we will go (…) from a bumpy path to a more predictable pattern”.
He also recalled that “very often respiratory viruses, for example, like influenza, do not go through an endemic phase. They go from a pandemic to very low levels of activity with potentially seasonal epidemics or epidemics that occur on a annual or semi-annual. A similar scenario could arise with SARS-CoV-2, he said.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus will not be eliminated
The specialist gave details of the forecasts made on the Covid-19. The world organization estimates that the virus will know “a phase of low incidence with potential peaks, especially when in certain seasons people find themselves indoors”favoring closed spaces due to the cold.
“We will not eliminate it and the SARS-CoV-2 virus will join the pantheon of respiratory viruses, like influenza viruses”, warned Dr. Michael Ryan. For him, the coronavirus will also continue to “cause significant respiratory diseases”.
