Expect no covid-19 silver bullet: WHO

Despite advances in efforts to find a vaccine, there may never be a “silver bullet” against the sars-cov-2 virus that has infected more than 18 million people around the world, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday.

“The message to people and governments is clear: ‘Do it all’,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a virtual news briefing from the UN body’s headquarters in Geneva.

“We know from serology studies that most people remain susceptible to this virus, even in areas that have experienced severe outbreaks,” he said, adding that over the past week several countries that looked as though they were past the worst are now having to contend with fresh spikes in cases.

“A number of vaccines are now in phase three clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection,” said Ghebreyesus.

“However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment and there might never be,” he said, adding that for now, stopping outbreaks comes down to the basics of public health and disease control—in this case, wearing masks, social distancing, hand-washing and testing.

Tedros said international epidemiologists had laid the groundwork to retrace the origins of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China.

The WHO and Chinese experts have drafted the terms of reference for the studies and a programme of work for an international team led by the WHO. It will include leading scientists and researchers from China and around the world.

“Epidemiological studies will begin in Wuhan to identify the potential source of infection of the early cases. Evidence and hypotheses generated through this work will lay the ground for further, longer-term studies,” said Tedros.

He pointed out that testing, isolating and treating patients, and tracing and quarantining their contacts is the only way in current times to prevent the disease from spreading.

On Friday, the WHO’s emergency committee on covid-19 met and reviewed the current pandemic. It recommended that countries engage in the access to covid-19 tools (ACT) accelerator, participate in relevant clinical trials, and prepare for safe and effective therapeutics.

More than 18 million people have been infected with the disease and 690,181 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University’s live dashboard of the disease