Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the World Health Organization’s emergency program, said this week that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic – including two more easily transmissible strains of the deadly virus – is not “necessarily the biggest” when it comes to consider possible future pandemics.
The new variants are named B.1.1.7 and 501.V2 and are reportedly likely to affect the current evolution of the pandemic.
What are the details?
According to Newsweek, Ryan said the COVID-19 pandemic is just “not necessarily the biggest.”
While the COVID-19 pandemic is “very severe”, the worst may not have happened yet.
Ryan, who made the remarks during a briefing on Monday, said: “This pandemic was very severe, it spread all over the world extremely fast, it affected every corner of this planet. But this is not necessarily the big one. ”
He added: “This virus is highly transmissible … and it kills people and has deprived so many people of their loved ones. But the current death toll is quite low compared to other emerging diseases. This is a wake-up call. ”
Ryan stressed that the planet is in a “fragile” state and that global society is becoming “increasingly complex.”
“These threats will continue,” he warned. “If we have to take something out of this pandemic with all the tragedy and the loss is that we have to plan our act, we have to prepare for something that may be even more severe in the future. In this sense, we must honor those we have lost by improving on what we do every day. “
What else?
According to Newsweek, more than a dozen countries around the world have reported COVID-19 cases caused by the new variants, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea , Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
“No strain was detected in the United States, but last week the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the British version” could already be in the United States undetected, “the outlet reported.
On Monday, Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Special Agents Unit for Pathogens at Boston Medical Center, told CNBC that the variant could have been overlooked in the United States only because of its current testing capacity.
“To find this strain, all we have to do is take a percentage of the diagnosed samples and do deep genetic analysis and [in] The United States, our capacity has not been spectacular, “she explained, pointing to a CDC report in early December.
“If the stem is here, we may be missing just because the holes in the net are too wide,” Bhadelia explained.