Top virologist says now is the time to eradicate Covid-19

Bengaluru: Dr T Jacob John, India’s too virologic says that now is the ideal time to eradicated the Covid-19 virus. He urges World Health Organisation (WHO) to pass a resolution to make a committee to prepare a plan to get rid of the virus from the world.

In a short paper published jointly by Dr John and Dr Dhanya Dharmapalan, a paediatric infectious disease expert from Mumbai, highlighted that once the world receiver from the pandemic, it can be stabilised and become endemic and seasonal, demanding continuous efforts from the countries unless it is eradicated.

Dr John said that the eradication of the virus will become difficult if it is too late and if it spreads to the wildlife. He said, “Our ability to eradicate the virus is only as long as it remains within humans. Once it spreads to the wild, we will have to simply endure it in a different form at different times.”

Last month, in the letter written to WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Dr Johna and Dr Dhanya urged to form a drafting committee or a task force to design a blueprint for the World Health Assembly (WHA) as it would go a long way to eradicate the virus.

The letter which is copied to India’s Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan who is also the chair of WHO’s executive committee and Dr Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist, reads, “Such a resolution is likely to electrify stakeholders’ goodwill and enthusiasm. The task force must present the strategy and a plan of action at the very next WHA meeting, and that is our purpose in writing to you now. We anticipate that future generations will appreciate an eradication agenda and fear they may not forgive us if we fail to take timely actions.”

Dr John and Dr Dhanya say that the pandemic will see a transition to an endemic. The risk to senior citizens and those with commoditised and also, long covid and other unpleasant aftershocks will persist even in endemic Covid-19.

The letter states, “Eradication is ‘extreme control’, hence the present control efforts can be expanded and transformed into national/regional elimination goals and global eradication goals.”

“Covid-19 is currently anthroponosis (transmissible from humans to animals under natural conditions) although it emerged as zoonosis (disease that jumped from a none human animal to humans). Reception of a similar event is unlikely, but we fear seeding of new vertebrate reservoirs by the way of ‘reverse zoonosis’. Eradication must preempt such eventualities. The problems are, obviously, formidable, but not insurmountable”, the letter reads.

Their paper published earlier states that the endemic circulation will take a heavy toll on life annually and stress the need for eradicating it.

Dr John said, “Eradication is an extreme form of control, eliminating the disease permanently and globally. There are effective vaccines and as the pandemic abates, herd community will be very high, enabling early eradication by additional build-up for vaccine-induced herd immunity.”