WHO chief says COVID-19 pandemic could be over in two years

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday said he hoped the coronavirus pandemic will be over in less than two years.

Ghebreyesus said the world had better technology to fight off the virus in the present time “and in our situation now with more technology, and of course, with more connectiveness, the virus has a better chance of spreading, it can move fast because we are more connected now,” Ghebreyesus was quoted as saying by Reuters.

“But at the same time we have also the technology to stop it and the knowledge to stop it,” he added. 

“So we have a disadvantage of globalization, closeness, connectedness but an advantage of better technology. 

“So we hope to finish this pandemic (in) less than two years.” He added that the Spanish Flu of 1918  “took two years to stop”.

However, he stipulated there was a need for unified global efforts to develop a vaccine for coronavirus. 

“That is really key with utilizing the available tools to the maximum and hoping that we can have additional tools like a vaccine,” he said. 

But he said the vaccine alone will not end the pandemic and people must make adjustments to their daily lives.

Early Saturday, almost 23 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported with almost 800,000 deaths recorded. 

The deadliest pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu which killed as many as 50 million people and infected around 500 million around the world between February 1918 and April 1920.