Cape Town - The World Health Organisation (WHO) chief is optimistic that the Covid-19 pandemic would be defeated in 2022 if countries work together to contain its spread.
WHO marked two years since they were notified of cases of an unknown pneumonia strain in China. This turned out to be Covid-19 and the start of the global crisis.
"If we end inequity, we end the pandemic,” said WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu
The outbreak in China also marked the beginning of a new way of living for all humanity. It also laid bare inequality, racism and nationalism. Dr Tedros spoke against vaccine hoarding by first world countries, and called for assistance to low income countries.
"Narrow nationalism and vaccine hoarding by some countries have undermined equity and created the ideal conditions for the emergence of the Omicron variant, and the longer inequity continues, the higher the risks of the virus evolving in ways we can't prevent or predict," added Dr Tedros.
Over 5.5 million people have died globally from the virus but the number is said to be more than that.
Infectious Diseases Specialist Dr Richard Lessells said that in future, the virus may be handled in a similar manner to how flu is handled.
“The reality is that there is still a lot of uncertainty, but what we have seen with this fourth wave is that even though the virus was very transmissible and infected a lot of people, the number of deaths has been much lower than what we saw in the previous waves,” he said.
Lessells attributed the low death rate to the immunity built by the population, vaccinations and prior infections.
“That may become the pattern going forward, that see the virus changing and we see new variants, but because of the immunity the impact of the new variants is less than what we saw previously,” he said.
Lessells said it was still important to get more people vaccinated and those due for booster shots to get them.
He raised concerns about the country’s low vaccination rates and that the country may not enjoy a lower impact of Covid-19 as compared to other countries with better vaccination rates.
“That is still a risk, if people remain unvaccinated. Of course, many of the people that have been unvaccinated have had Covid-19 a couple of times. Many of those people will have immunity from infections, but we know that it is still much better for them to also be vaccinated, then they will have much stronger protection against infection in the future,” he said.
Lessells said that this was the message the country should be spreading, that it is not too late to get vaccinated.
Lessells predicted that there may be more variants this year than in the two previous years.
Weekend Argus