WHO Chief Warns There May Never Be a Covid-19 ‘Silver Bullet’

The Chief of World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday issued warning that, despite the rush to discover effective vaccines, there might never be a “silver bullet” for the novel coronavirus.

Addressing a virtual press conference, the WHO Chief urged world’s governments and citizens to focus on doing the known basics to contain the proliferation of the highly contagious disease, such as testing, contact tracing, maintaining physical distance, and wearing a mask in order to tackle the outbreak, which has immensely disturbed normal life around the world and caused a devastating economic crisis.

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“We all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference.

“However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment — and there might never be.

“For now, stopping outbreaks comes down to the basics of public health and disease control.

So far the lethal infection has killed almost 690,000 people and infected at least 18.1 million since the pandemic emerged in Wuhan in China last December, as per the tally from official sources compiled by AFP.