COVID-19 pandemic unlikely to end this year, says WHO

The World Health Organisation has said it is unlikely the COVID-19 pandemic will end in 2021.

Director of WHO’s health emergencies programme, Mr Michael Ryan, said this at a press conference on Tuesday in Abuja.

He said, “I think it will be very premature and unrealistic to think that we are going to finish with this virus by the end of the year.

“What we can finish with – if we are smart – is hospitalisations, deaths and the tragedy associated with this pandemic.”

Ryan said the WHO’s focus at present was to keep transmissions as low as possible and vaccinate more and more people.

According to him, delivery of vaccine doses has improved compared to 10 weeks ago although there are ‘huge challenges’ in distributing them.

“If the vaccines begin to impact not only on death and hospitalisation, but have a significant impact on transmission dynamics and transmission risk, then I believe we will accelerate toward controlling this pandemic,” Ryan said.