RE: WHO13 May 2020 19:07
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It will be four or five years before Covid-19 is under control, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist predicted on Wednesday, in a bleak assessment of the difficulties that lie ahead.
Many factors will determine how long and to what extent the virus remains a threat, including whether it mutates, what containment measures are put in place and whether an effective vaccine is developed, Soumya Swaminathan told the FT’s Global Boardroom digital conference.
“I would say in a four to five-year timeframe we could be looking at controlling this,” she said, adding there was “no crystal ball” and the pandemic could “potentially get worse”.
A vaccine “seems for now the best way out”, but there were “lots of ifs and buts” about its efficacy and safety, as well as its production and equitable distribution, she said. A vaccine could also stop working if the virus changed, she added.
Peter Piot, professor of global health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who was also speaking on the FT panel, agreed that control of the virus depended on the development of an effective vaccine, but said the “elimination” of the disease “is going to require much much more”.
“Only smallpox has been eliminated and eradicated as a human disease,” said Prof Piot, who is himself recovering from the virus. Countries should be thinking in terms of years not months, he said: “We will have to find a way as societies to live with this” and change from lockdowns to more “granular, targeted types of interventions”.
Dr Swaminathan said weighing up the risks and benefits of easing restrictions, and figuring out how to reach a “new normal”, was the biggest challenge facing policymakers.
Not all countries have chosen to impose strict social distancing measures, however: Sweden has been a notable outlier as one of the few European countries that has not imposed a lockdown.
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