COVID-19, Like HIV, May Never Go Away — WHO

It seems the attention and interest of the whole world today is focused on one issue — the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the coronavirus may never go away and the world will have to learn to live with it, like HIV — human immunodeficiency virus — which first came in the 1980s and remains with us to this day.

The world continues to pin its hopes on a coronavirus vaccine, with more than 100 being developed in laboratories in several countries around the world, but none of them is close to final testing and approval. France’s Sanofi said the United States was due to get the first shipment of its vaccine, drawing a rebuke from French President Emanuel Macron who said any COVID-19 vaccine must not subject to market forces.

In Asia, where the coronavirus first emerged in December, 2019, China and South Korea reported some new cases after they started lifting restrictions but immediately responded with new restrictions. Japan experienced new cases after lifting a state of emergency in March, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has now extended the state of emergency to May 31.