MOSCOW, April 10. /TASS/. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) claim that another global pandemic is coming is highly overblown, merely an attempt to stay in the public spotlight, chief of the infectious diseases department of the Russian Health Ministry’s Pirogov National Research Medical University Vladimir Nikiforov thinks.
According to him, there is no evidence supporting the idea that a pandemic will break out in the near future.
Earlier, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asserted that the emergence of another pandemic is not a "theoretical risk" but an "epidemiological certainty."
"Simply put, there’s nothing to back this chatter up; it’s an attempt by the World Health Organization to regain some clout after the mess they created during COVID. Yes, certainly, at some point another pandemic will happen. This is not in question. But there are no harbingers that it will happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a year," he said.
Meanwhile, the expert pointed out, bird flu has been a threat for decades, even as human-to-human transmission has not happened yet. In the event of it making the interspecies transition to humans, avian flu could spread like wildfire, he claimed, but it is unknown when this may happen. "For two straight years already we have been giving mandatory shots against seasonal flu to poultry and pig farmers because they are the first ones to be affected. Such vaccination against seasonal flu provides background immunity. If they do get sick, then the course of the disease will be less severe. We are getting ready for this," the expert clarified.
Other threats
He acknowledged that a pandemic could happen if new coronavirus variants pop up. "A pandemic is possible only on the basis of an airborne infection. No other ways of transmission can trigger it. So, we can only talk about flu and coronavirus variants," Nikiforov emphasized.
The expert also singled out meningococcus as a potential concern, but noted that it is not highly contagious and, therefore, cannot produce a pandemic. "Ebola, for example, cannot constitute a pandemic, nor can Marburg virus. The methodology of developing vaccines has been worked out and, if something happens, the development of a vaccine will be launched quickly. These are not insurmountable obstacles," the scientist explained.
"From time to time, epidemics and pandemics do happen. But one must not whip up tensions that this is already the objective reality. These kinds of hysterics don't bring anything positive," Nikiforov concluded.