W.H.O.: Planet Unprepared for Future Pandemics, Which May Be More Deadly

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “This pandemic was not the ‘big one’. It was a wake-up call for us to invest more in science, logistics, training and communication to tackle more lethal future pandemics,” said Michael Ryan, W.H.O. (World Health Organization) Executive Director.

According to Ryan, the Sars-Cov-2, which has already infected more than 80.5 million people in the world and killed at least 1.76 million, is highly transmissible, but its lethality is relatively low. “The planet is fragile, there is much complexity and connectivity, and we must work together because there may be more severe pandemics in the future,” he said.

Countries are unable to cope with the current Covid-19 pandemic, according to Canadian epidemiologist Bruce Aylward, senior consultant for the W.H.O.: “Just look at the second and third waves”. “We may be more prepared, but not entirely prepared for this pandemic, let alone a future one,” he said.

The W.H.O. also said that the coronavirus variants detected in the UK and South Africa are different, although both show changes in the spike (structure used by the virus to penetrate the cells). According to the organization, there is still insufficient evidence about their impact on the pandemic and on vaccines.

Maria van Kerkhove, W.H.O. technical leader for Covid-19, said laboratory studies are being conducted to understand how variants interact with human cells, such as lung cells, for instance, and the impact of antibodies on these variants. The results may take weeks, she said.

The technical leader said that preliminary studies suggest that there have been no significant differences in the UK so far in terms of the severity of the disease and in hospitalizations.

Irrespective of the test results, new mutations are expected, and they occur more often when transmission is not controlled, said David Heymann, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“More important than blocking borders is to reduce contagion with the basic tools we already know, because the more people infected the greater the chance of mutations occurring,” said the specialist.

According to Marion Koopmans, head of the viral sciences department at the Erasmus Medical Center (Netherlands), the emergence of variants will be “increasingly frequent” and countries should enhance their capacity to sequence virus genomes while conducting laboratory analysis of mutations to get answers more rapidly.

She also stated that an in-depth analysis of what has worked over the course of this year is required to enable the fight against new pathogens. “A few years ago, scientists concluded that new vaccine technologies needed to be developed to react quickly to new pathogens, and this allowed the rapid production of immunizers against Covid-19 now,” she exemplified.