The Director of Health Emergencies of the World Health Organization (WHO), Mike Ryan, warned today that despite vaccinations against COVID-19 that are beginning in some countries there could be up to half a year more pandemic with high numbers of infections and deaths.
“The vaccine is a source of hope and we must celebrate it, but the next three or six months will be hard, in them countries that have an intense transmission of virus will see that it intensifies,” said Ryan at the wheel of press, when asked about the increase in cases in countries like Mexico.
At the same time, “those countries that have had the pandemic under control could suffer to stay that way,” said the Irish expert, who cited the East Asian nations as an example, where they are beginning to rise. contagion figures in some cities after months of relative calm.
Ryan warned that “past success is no guarantee that there will be success in the future” when it comes to containing the pandemic, and noted that even when vaccines are available in the beginning “they will not be a sufficient number to be able to avoid contagions “.
The WHO director of health emergencies stressed on the Mexican case that like other countries in America, such as Brazil or the US, “never actually came out of the first wave with some control” and are now facing to “an intense period in which they must put in place all the necessary preventive measures.”
Ryan further confirmed that the long-awaited WHO-led mission to investigate the origin of the coronavirus in China will travel to the Asian country in the first week of January and visit the central city of Wuhan, where one year the first cases were reported.