MOSCOW, April 30. /TASS/. Another wave of COVID-19 is unavoidable, because a majority of the population has no immunity to it, the representative of the World Health Organization to Russia, Melita Vujnovic, told TASS in an interview.
"This is an absolutely new virus and only a small group of the population has immunity against it. Until the moment we have devised a set of special preventive measures and have a vaccine we will be unable to say that we can prevent a second wave," Vujnovic said.
In her opinion it is essential to use the experience of the first wave to prevent a dramatic outbreak of the infection during the second one.
"We expect that the healthcare system and the system of sanitary and epidemiological supervision will be working together to identify minor hotbeds and to track down the infected patients’ contacts," Vujnovic said.
In particular, she emphasized the need for restricting contacts. In her opinion, if this knowledge is used properly, "the infection rate will be kept at a low level until it is clear how immunity is formed."
In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus — named COVID-19 by the WHO — have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.