Fri 18 February 2022:
The world has become “better prepared” to deal with future variants of the coronavirus, the CEO and co-founder of German vaccine-maker BioNTech said, as the company works on an Omicron-specific shot.
“We will have to get used to the fact that we will have to live with the virus for the next 10 years,” said Ugur Sahin, whose company developed the first mRNA vaccine against the virus with US pharma giant Pfizer.
As the surge of cases due to the spread of the more transmissible Omicron variant of the virus seemed to be receding in Europe, Sahin said it would not be the last virus wave.
New virus variants were inevitable “because the virus will mutate further”, he said, potentially leading to new flare-ups in cases.
But the world was “entering a phase where society is getting a better understanding on how to deal with the virus,” Sahin said.
“We are always learning more and are becoming better prepared,” the BioNTech boss said.
New cases decline by 19% worldwide, deaths stabilise
The number of new COVID-19 cases worldwide has dropped by 19 percent in the past week, while recorded deaths remain stable, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest report on the coronavirus pandemic.
The United Nations’ health agency said late on Tuesday that “just over 16 million new cases and just under 75,000 new deaths were reported” globally during the week of February 7 to February 13.
WHO said that all other coronavirus variants, including Alpha, Beta and Delta, continue to decline globally as Omicron crowds them out.
Among the more than 400,000 COVID-19 virus sequences uploaded to the world’s biggest virus database in the last week, more than 98 percent were Omicron.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said repeatedly the pandemic is not over and it is premature for countries to think that the end might be imminent.
“Our expectation is that the acute phase of this pandemic will end this year, of course with one condition, the 70 percent vaccination [target is achieved] by mid this year around June, July,” he told reporters in South Africa last week.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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