Virus ‘will be with us for a long time’: WHO

GENEVA: Most countries are still in the early stages of dealing with the new coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday, adding that most people on the planet remain susceptible to COVID-19.

"Make no mistake: we have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference. But with months to go before a viable vaccine can be rolled out, more than half of humanity remains under some form of lockdown.

Singapore extended its confinement for a month to June 1, as the Asian city-state which managed to keep its outbreak in check early on is hit by the onslaught of second wave of infections.

The director of the US Centres for Disease Control also warned Americans to prepare for a more ferocious second wave. "There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through," Robert Redfield told the Washington Post.

In South Africa, more than 73,000 extra troops were sent out to enforce a shutdown as authorities struggled to keep people indoors -- particularly in overcrowded townships. With businesses shuttered and millions of jobs lost, the world is facing its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said it would hit the least privileged the hardest.

"I want to stress that we are not only facing a global health pandemic, but also a global humanitarian catastrophe," WFP executive director David Beasley told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.

"Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations... face being pushed to the brink of starvation." The WFP said the number of people suffering from acute hunger was projected to nearly double to 265 million this year. Standing in line in Bangkok’s historic quarter for food donations of rice, noodles, milk and curry packets, Chare Kunwong, a 46-year-old masseur said: "If I wait for the government’s aid then I’ll be dead first."

Among the hardest hit economically were also millions of migrant workers from South Asia and elsewhere who toil in the Middle East to send money back home to their families. Remittances are expected to plunge by about 20 percent globally this year, the biggest decline in recent history, the World Bank said in a report of the money transfers that are lifelines to millions of families.

The pandemic shutdowns mean even bodies of some migrant workers cannot be sent home, and are instead being buried or cremated in the country where they die -- often without any loved ones present.

"Nobody comes anymore, nobody touches, nobody says goodbye," said Ishwar Kumar, manager of a Hindu cremation ground in Dubai. Before the pandemic, people would come "to grieve and bring flowers. Now they die alone".

In the United States, Trump said he would stop the issuing of green cards for 60 days, but exempt temporary workers such as seasonal farm labourers. "It will help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens," he said.

"It would be wrong and unjust for Americans to be replaced with immigrant labor flown in from abroad." The US -- with nearly 45,000 deaths and more than 800,000 coronavirus infections -- is the hardest-hit country, and healthcare infrastructure in major hotspots such as New York City has struggled to cope.

Furious over the devastating epidemic, the US state of Missouri sued China’s leadership, seeking damages over what it described as deliberate deception and insufficient action to stop the pandemic.

The first-of-its-kind state lawsuit comes amid calls in Congress to punish China and a campaign by Trump to focus on Beijing’s role as he faces criticism over his own handling of the crisis.

Meanwhile, the race to develop an effective vaccine against the novel coronavirus gathered pace this week, as clinical trials on humans were approved in Germany and launched in the UK.

Though there are now around 150 development projects worldwide, the German and British plans are among only five clinical trials on humans which have been approved across the globe.

In Britain, volunteers in a trial at the University of Oxford are set to be given on Thursday the first dose of a potential vaccine based on a virus found in chimpanzees. Meanwhile on Wednesday, German regulatory body PEI green-lighted the country’s first trials on human volunteers for a vaccine developed by German firm Biontech and US giant Pfizer.

The Oxford trial, run by the university’s Jenner Institute, will involve 510 volunteers aged between 18 and 55 in the first phase. Research director Professor Sarah Gilbert estimated that it has around an 80 percent chance of being successful.

The institute aims to develop a million doses of the vaccine by September, so as to distribute it as quickly as possible after approval. The Oxford trial is part of a nationwide effort in the UK which since Friday has been spearheaded by a government taskforce.

In Germany, meanwhile, the PEI said its approval of the Biontech trial marked a "significant step" in making a vaccine "available as soon as possible".

In the first phase, it will see "200 healthy volunteers aged between 18 and 55 years" vaccinated with variants of the vaccine, while the second phase could see the inclusion of volunteers who belonged to high-risk groups.

On Wednesday, Biontech CEO Ugur Sahin told a press conference that tests would begin "at the end of April". He added that the firm expected to have collected first data by "the end of June or beginning of July".

Biontech also said that they and Pfizer hoped to gain regulatory approval soon to test the same vaccine candidate in the US. The PEI meanwhile claimed that "further clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccine candidates will start in Germany in the next few months".

There are currently no approved vaccines or medication for the COVID-19 disease, which has killed more than 170,000 people worldwide and infected more than two million. Experts estimate that it will take at least 12 to 18 months to develop a new vaccine.

Last week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a vaccine was the only thing to return "normalcy" to the world, and called for development projects to be accelerated. A UN resolution adopted on Monday, meanwhile, called for "equitable, efficient and timely" access to any vaccine that might be developed.

Aside from Biontech and Oxford, three other clinical trials on humans have been approved worldwide since mid-March, with Chinese and US developers among the first to move. Beijing approved the first trial for a vaccine developed by the military-backed Academy of Military Medical Sciences and Hong Kong-listed biotech firm CanSino Bio on March 16.

That day the US drug developer Moderna said it had begun human tests for their vaccine with the US National Institutes of Health. Another US lab, San Diego-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals, began first phase human trials on April 6. Yet while Biontech hailed what it called a "global development program" on Wednesday, the search for a vaccine has also been a cause of friction between countries.