Experts to “Asharq Al-Awsat”: We have moved from “epidemic panic” to “coexistence”
With the Corona epidemic entering its fourth year, the question remains: When will it end? And given the number of injuries and deaths, which does not stop adding more every day, it does not seem that the world has turned the page on the pandemic, but rather no one can predict the date of that step.
Matthew Woodruff, a teacher of human immunology at the American Emory University, said in exclusive statements to Asharq Al-Awsat, “Vaccination campaigns have achieved great success in preventing countless deaths around the world, which helped end the panic regarding the virus.” ».
However, the death rate has risen once more, due to “Chinese policies, which suddenly abandoned the (zero Covid) policy that prevented the Chinese community from forming community immunity, and this led to an increase in the number of deaths, especially among the elderly,” according to estimates. experts.
While Woodruff excludes that “we will slip back into the early days of the epidemic, without a major unexpected surge in the virus,” Ahmed Salman, a teacher of immunology and vaccine development at the Edward Jeans Institute at the British University of Oxford, said in a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat. He added that vaccines, even old ones, are still effective in preventing severe illness and death, adding that this “has a major role in the world’s transition from the stage of emergency and panic to coexistence with the virus.”
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