The global pandemic should end next year, predicted by the World Health Organization (WHO), quoted by the European edition of Politico.

"2022 should be the end of the COVID-19 pandemic," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking Wednesday at the organisation's latest planned coronavirus briefing for the year.

Tedros said he believed the pandemic would end next year because, two years after the situation, "we know the virus very well and have all the tools [to fight it]." He said WHO projections show that vaccine supplies must be sufficient to vaccinate the entire global adult population and give boosters to high-risk populations by the first quarter of 2022. The big problems that had to be overcome were "The effective implementation of all instruments", and in particular "the care of justice".

"Unless we vaccinate the whole world, I don't think we can end this pandemic," he concluded. "My concern is whether we have the stamina to end it," said Maria Van Kerkhove, technical director for COVID-19 in the WHO's Emergency Health Program, adding: "I believe we can."

Meanwhile, the WHO is still monitoring whether Omicron variant is as severe as previous versions such as Delta. These figures are still "uncertain," Van Kerch said. While some companies are already producing vaccines for the Omicron variant, Mike Ryan of the WHO has warned that they may not be effective against other circulating strains.

Sumya Swaminathan, the WHO's chief scientist, said ideally that pharmaceutical companies would wait for the WHO to declare which variant to target, in the same way as seasonal flu. She said that based on existing data, this will probably be a version of the virus that contains properties that make it more portable and virulent, but that research continues.

/Focus

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