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WHO Director-General Ghebreyesus: Decreasing disease severity likely
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Johanna Geron / AP
The World Health Organization (WHO) assumes that corona infections lead to a weaker course of the disease over time.
According to the current state of knowledge, this is the most likely scenario, said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The severity of Covid diseases is likely to continue to decrease despite further virus mutations as the population's immunity increases through vaccination and infection.
This emerges from a plan to end the pandemic emergency drawn up by the WHO.
According to the WHO, in this scenario the number of infections can still increase again and again if the immunity of many people decreases after some time.
Then, according to a strategy paper by the WHO, repeated booster vaccinations are necessary for groups of people who are particularly at risk.
The UN organization also considers seasonally recurring corona waves to be possible in the temperate climate zones to which Europe belongs.
Overall, the plan includes three scenarios.
In addition to what has already been outlined, there is also a best-case development: In this, future Corna variants would be "significantly less serious", protection against serious diseases would be long-lasting - without the need for a future refresher or major changes to current vaccines.
More threatening virus variants are also conceivable
In the worst-case scenario that the WHO has contemplated, the virus will morph into a new, highly communicable and deadly threat.
In this scenario, vaccines would be less effective and immunity to serious illness and death would wane quickly.
This would require major changes to current vaccines and a broad campaign of booster shots for vulnerable groups.
The contingency plan is WHO's third and likely to be its last, Ghebreyesus said.
The WHO's first report was published at the beginning of the pandemic in February 2020.
According to the WHO, the weekly number of new infections fell by 14 percent worldwide in the previous week to around ten million cases.
A total of 479 million corona cases and more than six million deaths have been reported since the beginning of the pandemic up to Sunday.
Sol/dpa/Reuters