Quote of the Day (The World Health Organization’s Maria Van Kerkhove, on COVID-19, ‘Here to Stay’)

“The worry is complacency. The worry is reduced fiscal space, mental space and political space to talk about COVID in the context of everything else. I am not suggesting that the world drop what it’s doing and focus [only] on COVID. That is not what WHO is suggesting. We’re saying, ‘Please don’t drop the ball.’ The virus is here. It’s evolving. It’s killing [more than 11,000 reported worldwide deaths between mid-December 2023 and mid-January 2024, with more than half of those in the U.S.]. It’s causing post-COVID conditions [also called long COVID]. And we don’t know the long-term effects. It’s a virus that is here to stay.”— Maria Van Kerkhove, now interim director of the Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention for the World Health Organization, quoted by Meghan Bartels, “Rampant COVID Poses New Challenges in the Fifth Year of the Pandemic,” Scientific American, Feb. 6, 2024