WHO Spokesperson: Covid-19 Is Here to Stay, No Chance to Wipe It out

A World Health Organization spokesperson has claimed COVID-19 is here to stay, with the opportunity to eradicate it now likely long gone. 

And that means a return to pre-pandemic normality is off the cards, according to Margaret Harris. 

"The numbers we're seeing - the cases, the deaths - are higher than at any other time in the pandemic," Dr Harris told The AM Show on Wednesday.

"We saw last week, it just took a week to do numbers that it took six months to do last year... I was looking at the numbers and thought, 'that can't be right'." 

While much of the world suffered a massive wave of the virus in January, India had almost completely wiped it out - prompting authorities to loosen restrictions. That, combined with the emergence of the local variant with genetic mutations believed to increase its infectivity, has led to a near-vertical explosion of cases on the subcontinent. 

Official figures show world-record level numbers of infections now at over 300,000 a day, but some experts believe there could be millions every day going undetected. The more infections there are, the more chances the virus has to mutate - possibly finding ways to avoid vaccines.

"It's a very, very intense conflagration," said Dr Harris. "Over the last week we saw over 2 million cases reported to us and more than 15,000 deaths. What's probably more important is the increase - a 50 percent increase in cases and 90 percent increase in deaths. So the trajectory of their pandemic right now is straight up."

The virus behind COVID-19 is known to scientists as SARS-CoV-2. The '2' is there because it's similar to the original SARS virus that killed 774 people in the early 2000s. The reason we're not still dealing with SARS-COV-1 is that it was...