The European Commission’s top scientific pandemic adviser has offered a sober prognosis on available options to eradicate Covid-19.
There are four theoretical ways out of the pandemic, Belgian microbiologist Peter Piot who is a special advisor to the European commission president, told reporters on Wednesday (28 October) as quoted by EUobserver on Thursday.
Only the final one appears to provide any hope.
The first option is that the virus changes “by some miracle” so that it becomes less lethal.
“Unlikely to happen, but you never know,” he said.
The second is to infect up to 70 percent of the population, also known as herd immunity, at the expense of millions of deaths. “I think that is not something we can ethically accept,” he said.
The third is long-term lockdowns that push people into poverty.
“And lastly, and that is where there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that is a vaccine, or vaccines,” he said.
Piot was speaking alongside, and via video conference, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
He pointed out there are 11 vaccines are currently in clinical trials.
“I am quite hopeful that by the end of the year we will know how affective some of these vaccines will be,” he said.
But any vaccine will first need to go through extensive testing for safety, involving clinical trials of possibly up to 100,000 people.
