Covid-19 may never go away and the world will have to come to terms with this, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated in a news conference on May 13.

Virus may or may not settle into a long-term problem

According to Michael Ryan, the executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies programme, it is unlikely that "anyone can predict when or if the disease will disappear."

Ryan states that the novel coronavirus "may become just another endemic virus in our communities".

"HIV has not gone away - but we have come to terms with the virus."

However, "great hope" lies in the finding of a "highly effective vaccine" that WHO hopes will be able to eliminate the virus and be distributed to populations around the world, Ryan added.

"There are no promises and there are no dates. This disease may settle into a long-term problem, or it may not be. In some senses, we have control over that future but it's going to take a massive effort to do," he said.

Long way to go before world can go back to normal

Since the Covid-19 outbreak, more than half of the world has been put under some form of lockdown.

Despite many countries wanting to ease restrictions, WHO has warned there is no way to guarantee that this would not trigger a spike in the number of infections.

Ryan stressed that the success criteria of lifting lockdown should not be "by counting the cases in the ICUs or counting the bodies in the morgue."

According to him, the way to know that the disease is coming back is to "have community-based surveillance, to be testing and to know the problem is coming back, and then be able to adjust your public health measures accordingly."

"Let us not go back to a situation where we don't know what's happening until our hospitals are overflowing. That is not a good way to do business," he said.

Apart from this, Ryan also mentioned that there is still a "long, long way to go" before the world can go back to how it was before the virus, and insisted that countries would have to "stay alert" and "on course".

"There is some magical thinking going on that lockdowns work perfectly and that unlocking lockdowns will go great. Both are fraught with dangers," he said.

Additionally, Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead of WHO's Health Emergencies programme, stated that lockdown "isn't an all or nothing."

"(Countries) need to find a new normal as (they) go forward in managing the risk of resurgence and protecting people's health while getting people back to living their daily lives," she said.

You can watch the full press conference here:

Top image via World Health Organization on YouTube