Pandemic with an end in sight

Looking at such worrying numbers and knowing of cases and more cases, families that have been isolated for weeks, now one being positive and then the other and there goes another 7 days…. Despite this reality and although no country is out of danger because of the pandemic, there are many new tools to prevent and treat covid-19. More than 8.5 billion doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide, saving millions of lives. New treatments have been developed, which should dramatically increase access and reduce mortality.

The WHO now believes that the end of the Covid-19 pandemic may be happening in the coming months and that the disease, like the flu, may become seasonal and return only in the winter: “there will be a period of tranquillity before Covid-19 returns at the end of the year, which does not necessarily mean the return of the pandemic”.

Regarding Europe in particular, Hans Kluge, Regional Director for Europe at the World Health Organization, adds that “it is plausible that the region is heading towards a kind of pandemic endgame”, but “not a Covid-19 endgame, but from the pandemic”.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, also says that this will be the year in which the pandemic will end. To help prepare the world for future epidemics and pandemics, the new WHO BioHub System for countries to share new biological materials was established and the WHO Center for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin was opened to leverage innovations in data science for surveillance and public health responses.

According to Tedros Ghebreyesus, “First, we must end the pandemic. To that end, we need all countries to work together to achieve the global target of vaccinating 70% of people in all countries by mid-2022. We need governments to continue to implement tailored public health and social measures, including testing, sequencing and notification of variants by all countries, without fear of punitive measures. And we all need to do our part, wearing masks, distancing ourselves, avoiding crowds, meeting outdoors when possible or in well-ventilated spaces indoors.”

In 2022, countries will begin negotiating a global pandemic agreement to strengthen the governance policies, funding, systems and tools the world needs to quickly prevent, prepare for, detect and respond to epidemics and pandemics. This is what we must work on.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also believes that the covid-19 pandemic is entering its final phase, an end precipitated by the high contagion of the Ómicron variant: “After Ómicron affects a country, then in the rest of the year there should be a lot of fewer cases, and covid-19 can be treated like seasonal flu,” he said.

The billionaire’s prediction was made in an interview on the social network Twitter with Devi Sridhar, president of the University of Edinburgh, about this pandemic and how to avoid the next one – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already invested 1.75 billion dollars in the fight against the covid-19.

The billionaire was also asked how to deal with the challenge of misinformation about vaccines, masks and other interventions that proliferates on Facebook and other social platforms, and said that global and national health authorities need to have the resources to, on the one hand, detect the emergence of a pandemic at the beginning and, on the other hand, to communicate better. The interview can be read in its entirety in Jornal Público.

These opinions based on real facts and credible sources contribute to increase our belief in a better tomorrow and our desire to come back fully recharged again, at all levels, both personally and professionally. We have to “inhale confidence and exhale doubt”.