The COVID-19 pandemic has been keeping the world on hold for over a year and a half, and one of the most obvious questions is when it will all end. Surely too many people are tired of wearing masks, maintaining social distancing, and obey a lot more rules.
Rather than asking when the pandemic will end, we should ask ourselves IF it will ever end. It sounds very harsh, we know it, but it’s the way we have to put it. And the World Health Organization (WHO) has an even harsher response to the question, as CNBC.com reveals.
Unvaccinated countries are the “playground” of COVID mutations
The new harsh claim is that COVID-19 is likely “here to stay with us”. The virus still mutates in unvaccinated countries across the world.
Dr. Mike Ryan, who is the executive director of the Health Emergencies Program of the World Health Organization, declared as cited by CNBC.com:
I think this virus is here to stay with us and it will evolve like influenza pandemic viruses, it will evolve to become one of the other viruses that affects us.
The world will likely have to live with COVID forever, similar to how it’s doing in the case of the influenza virus.
Luckily enough, SARS-CoV-2 isn’t exactly some “die hard” virus. The chances are pretty big to avoid infection by simply washing hands frequently, avoiding crowds as much as possible, and wear a mask as much as you can.
However, data provided by worldometers.info reveals that until now, over 223 million COVID infections occurred across the world. The same source reveals that over 4.6 million people lost their lives in the battle with the coronavirus. However, there is also some good news: more than 199.5 million people who had the virus were recovered.