There may never be a COVID-19 ‘silver bullet’, WHO warns

The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned Monday that there might never be a “silver bullet” for the new coronavirus, despite the rush to discover effective vaccines.

The WHO urged governments and citizens to focus on doing the known basics, such as testing, contact tracing, maintaining physical distance and wearing a mask in order to suppress the pandemic, which has upended normal life around the globe and triggered a devastating economic crisis.

“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.

“Do it all,” he urged.

The novel coronavirus has killed nearly 690,000 people and infected at least 18.1 million since the outbreak emerged in Wuhan in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.