‘Life with the pandemic may turn into life with pandemics,' warns immunologist

* Photo: Pirha

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When World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "We hope that the coronavirus pandemic will end in less than 2 years," it had just been 7 months since the pandemic broke out. It has been 2 years and 15 days since the first case was diagnosed on December 1, 2019; but the pandemic has not ended.

With several mutations and resulting variants such as Beta, Delta, Delta Plus and now Omicron since its outbreak, the COVID-19 outbreak is still ongoing and it is not known for how much longer it will be around.

'A joint solution must be developed'

Turkish Medical Association (TTB) Secretary General and Immunologist Prof. Vedat Bulut has spoken to bianet about "for how much longer the pandemic will continue" and "what must be done to end it".

Bulut has underlined that "the pandemic is the problem of the entire world and a joint solution must be found for it for this reason".

He has said, "Life with the pandemic may turn into life with pandemics. The degradation of the ecosystem may bring about new pandemics. The balance of the world has been damaged even in two years. For this reason, a joint solution must be found."

According to Bulut, "if no radical and global solution is found, the pandemic will not come to an end."

'It could have ended in the first 6 months'

Given the world population, the vaccination against the pandemic is not sufficient, Prof. Bulut has stressed, briefly adding:

"If the vaccination campaign had been run on a global scale and around 6-6.5 billion people had been vaccinated in the first 6 months of the pandemic, the pandemic would be over now. But, unfortunately, only 45 percent of the world population have been vaccinated so far. And the vaccinated countries are the ones that have economic power.

"New variants emerge in poor countries with no or low vaccination rates. The more opportunities the virus finds to spread, the more opportunities it finds to mutate. When we consider the variants, we see that they come from poor countries such as South Africa and South Asia.

"Because the vaccine cannot reach these places. If the supply and patent of the vaccine was public, these problems would not emerge."

'Vaccine must be supplied to all countries'

According to Prof. Vedat Bulut, "the countries of the world must come together and create a fund". He has said:

Pandemic is a problem for all countries of the world. Germany, England, United States, Turkey... It is the joint problem of everyone. As the vaccine has not spread to the world, new variants come back like a boomerang and hit all countries.

"Only in Turkey, there are 15 vaccine studies. It means a waste of resources. Instead of doing this, the whole world must support 3-4 studies and the vaccine must be supplied to the entire world population. There is no other way out from the pandemic." (RT/SD)