Gloomy prognosis of the director of one of the companies that produces the vaccine

Gloomy prognosis of the director of one of the companies that produces the vaccine

Many leading health officials believe that there is a high probability that COVID-19 will become an endemic disease, that is, that it will be permanently present, but probably in lower levels of infection than today.

Chief Executive Officer of the biotech firm Moderna, a company that produces a vaccine against the coronavirus, says that "SARS-CoV-2 is not going anywhere."

"We are going to live with this virus, we think, forever," he said during a panel discussion at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, CNBC reports.

According to him, scientists are constantly monitoring whether new strains of the virus appear, so that vaccines can be produced.

The WHO message is not encouraging either

The pessimistic forecast was also given by the WHO, which announced that the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic could be more difficult than the first, given the speed of the virus's spread, especially in the northern hemisphere where a more contagious strain is circulating.

"We have entered the second year of the pandemic, which can be more severe when we see how fast COVID is spreading," WHO representative Mike Ryan, Executive Director of Health Emergencies Program said, as reported by Reuters.

The WHO, in the latest report, states that about five million new cases of coronavirus were recorded last week.

"After the holidays, in some countries the situation will be much worse before it gets better," Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO Technical Lead on COVID-19, said.