The World Health Organization warned that the coronavirus pandemic might be relatively mild compared to future outbreaks.
“This pandemic has been very severe. It’s spread around the world extremely quickly and affected every corner of this planet. But this is not necessarily the big one,” Dr. Michael Ryan said at a WHO press conference on Monday.
Ryan, the executive director of WHO’s Health Emergency Program, said the reason for the pandemic not being the big one is that the case fatality rate for the coronavirus is “reasonably low compared to other emerging diseases.” He did not specify what those emerging diseases were.
There are viruses that are far more fatal than the coronavirus, such as Middle East respiratory syndrome and Ebola. The WHO has estimated that the coronavirus fatality rate is about 1.4%. For MERS, it is about 37%, while for Ebola it may be as high as 50%. But occurrences of those viruses are rare.
Ryan added that this pandemic was a “wake-up call.”
“The planet is fragile,” he said. “We live in an increasingly complex, global society. These threats will continue. If there’s one thing that we need to take from this pandemic, with all of the tragedy and loss, it is that we need to get our act together. We need to get ready for something that may even be more severe in the future.”
