Geneva:
Despite vaccines against Covid-19 becoming rolled out in a quantity of nations, the World Health Organization warned Monday that herd immunity would not be accomplished this year.
Countries across the globe are searching forward to vaccines ultimately enabling a return to normality in the months ahead.
But the WHO’s chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan warned that it will take time to generate and administer adequate doses to halt the spread of the virus.
“We are not going to achieve any levels of population immunity or herd immunity in 2021,” she told a virtual press briefing from WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, stressing the want to continue measures like physical distancing, hand washing and mask wearing to rein in the pandemic.
She hailed the “incredible progress” produced by scientists who managed the unthinkable of building not a single but many protected and powerful vaccines against a brand new virus in beneath a year.
But, she stressed, the rollout “does take time.”
“It takes time to scale the production of doses, not just in the millions, but here we are talking about in the billions,” she pointed out, calling on individuals to “be a little bit patient.”
Swaminathan stressed that ultimately, “the vaccines are going to come. They are going to go to all countries.”
“But meanwhile we mustn’t forget that there are measures that work,” she stated.
There would be a want to continue taking the public well being and social measures aimed at halting transmission for “the rest of this year at least.”
()