World Health Organization Special Envoy Dr. David Nabarro warned Sunday that COVID-19 is a virus that will "stalk" the globe until there’s a vaccine to protect against it.
In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” Nabarro said testing to pick up the coronavirus will be key to containing outbreaks.
"We think it is going to be a virus that stalks the human race for quite a long time to come until we can all have a vaccine that will protect us,” he said. “ There will be small outbreaks that will emerge sporadically and they will break through our defenses.”
“The key for this particular virus is that every community has a kind of defensive shield, can pick up cases as soon as they appear, isolate them and stop outbreaks from developing,” he said. “It is going to be necessary for every single country to have that capacity.”
Nabarro said it’d be "unfortunate" if President Donald Trump makes good on a threat to cut off funding to WHO over anger about China withholding evidence on the outbreak there.
"It's too important to have anything that disturbs the functioning of the international system at this time,” he said.
"We're right in the middle of this massive epic struggle. Every single human being in the world is affected by it,” he said, adding: “I really do hope that all nations will not find any reason to make threats or other such things that will undermine our capacity to bring together all the best knowledge that we can find.”
He also said WHO has to "rely on information that's received from different governments … we have to move forward. We have to get the best possible cooperation,” and that there’ll time for criticism of that system later.
"We know that there will be many things that are found to have perhaps not been done as well as they could have been done,” he said.
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