Who for three years he has been one of the most prominent faces in the global fight against the covid, World Health Organization (WHO) expert María Van Kerkhove analyzes a disease that It no longer causes the same social alarm as before, but according to her we still have to worry.
the expert, expert in fighting epidemics since investigating bird flu outbreaks in Cambodia at the turn of the century, It takes stock of the year 2022, in which the alert level for the covid was lowered, and launches its forecasts for 2023.
“The pandemic situation was really different (this year), but we were as busy as ever. Now the task is to calibrate plans to deal with covid in the long term. The level of intensity is really different, but there is still a lot of work to be done,” says the expert, who warns that the pandemic can still cause difficulties: “We are now seeing a decline in cases. Deaths are down, but we’re not out of the woods yet. The virus continues to evolve before our eyes, and there are still between 8,000 and 10,000 deaths a week, an unacceptable figure.
The global vaccination rate has not reached the desired magnitudeAccording to Van Kerkhove, another issue that worries him: “70% immunity should be achieved in all countries and there is still no equal distribution. Also important is the goal of achieving rates of 100% in high-risk groups, such as the elderly, health workers and immunocompromised people.
Regarding vaccines, he assures that “they are incredibly protective against all the omicron variants that are circulating and hold up well against severe forms of the disease”, but warns that “the question now is whether future variants, which tend to be increasingly contagious, will people lose immunity and they could get reinfected. For this he believes it is “possible” that more doses are needed, although there are still no “answers on what kind of vaccines will be needed”. To determine the frequency, the variants must be traced. This is normal that the virus acquires immunity over the years.
In 2023, the expert believes that the virus will “continue to circulate”: “We believe it will be more transmissible, but we also expect a reduction in the impact of covid. I don’t think we will go back to the situation of 2020″. On the possibility of declaring the end of the pandemic, he says: “Now we are discussing whether to stop considering covid an international emergency”.
