The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the COVID-19 pandemic is still volatile, saying there could be more trouble before the virus settles into a predictable pattern.
In a press conference on Tuesday, WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said that while the numbers are going down, there’s “still a lot of people dying and that’s still a lot of people getting sick.”
Ryan noted that respiratory viruses do not pass from a pandemic to an endemic phase, rather move to low levels of activity with potentially seasonal epidemic peaks.
“We don’t turn off a pandemic switch. It’s much more likely that we’re going to see…a bumpy road to a more predictable pattern,” he said.
Like influenza, Ryan bared that the virus would not be eliminated and still cause significant respiratory disease to vulnerable people.
“I would hope that as the emergency committee meets in May, they will have further positive advice to give Dr. Tedros around their assessment of the trajectory of the pandemic and the existence or not of a PHEIC,” he stressed.
The WHO’s emergency committee on Covid-19 meets every three months and is due to assemble in early May to lay out its advice to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who has the final say on whether the virus still constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
