The World Health Organization "should declare the end of the pandemic". More: "I think it is close to doing so and that the delay is due to a residue of prudence" .

Word of the virologist Giorgio Palù, president of Aifa according to which Covid today "is no longer a significant risk, today this virus has become very little virulent if not really harmless" .

Covid, Palù continues, «has changed several times until it becomes, with the variant now circulating unscientifically nicknamed Arturo, the cause of colds and conjunctivitis in children . It has a very short incubation, two days compared to the initial seven-eight, so it infects more because it has a faster infective phase. It stops at the first nasal passages, it does not descend into the bronchi and lungs ».

The Arturo virus «is a harmless mutant, it infects but is not fatal. The risk, as with other respiratory viruses, is for the frailest.

WHO reiterated that the pandemic, declared as such at the end of March 2020, is still a public health emergency of international concern. But now, Palù underlines, "we are waiting for the official signal of the end, we are living in a post-pandemic context, as the data on mortality, incidence and hospitalizations show, in continuous decline ".

A vaccine booster? "At this stage it only makes sense for people hospitalized in retirement homes, the over 80s, the most exposed subjects by profession and patients with weakened immune systems ".

(Unioneonline/L)

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