The COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding in Europe, but getting worse globally with the number of infections expected to reach 10 million next week and the number of deaths 500,000, the head of the World Health Organisation Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Speaking via video-conference with members of the European Parliament's health committee, Tedros said that once the pandemic was over, the world should not return to its previous state, but build a "new normal" that would be fairer, greener and help prevent climate change.
"It would be very difficult to say for sure that we will have a vaccine," Dr Tedros said. "We never had a vaccine for a coronavirus. So this will be, when discovered, hoping that it will be discovered, it will be the first one."
He said the WHO had already more than 100 candidates for a vaccine of which one was at an advanced stage of development.
"Hoping that there will be a vaccine, the estimate is we may have a vaccine within one year. If accelerated, it could be even less than that, but by a couple of months. That’s what scientists are saying," he said.
Once the pandemic was over, Dr Tedros told the committee, the world should not return to its previous state, but build a "new normal" that would be fairer, greener and help prevent climate change.
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