Scientists And WHO Criticized The Statements Of The Doctor From Italy About The Weakening Of The Coronavirus

Scientists and WHO criticized the statements of the doctor from Italy about the weakening of the coronavirus

Scientists and the WHO called the resonant statement of the Italian doctor Alberto Zangrillo about the weakening of COVID-19 as groundless and called for extreme caution.

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The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has not suddenly become less dangerous to humans. Many scientists announced this on Monday, June 1. The same idea was expressed in a virtual briefing by Michael Ryan, WHO's emergency director.

Thus, scientists and WHO representatives reacted to the statement of Alberto Zangrillo, chief physician of the San Raffaele hospital in Milan. According to Reuters, he stated that clinically the virus no longer exists in Italy.

“The swabs that have been taken in the last 10 days have shown that the viral load is completely unmatched compared to what we saw a month or two ago,” he told RAI on Sunday.

“This is absolutely not true,” Michael Ryan replied flatly to the Italian doctor's statements.

Ryan, who is an epidemiologist by profession, said that it is now dangerous to think that the virus has become less dangerous.

“We have to be extremely careful not to create the feeling that the virus suddenly, of its own accord, decided to become less pathogenic,” MedicalXpress quotes him.

Michael Ryan explained that the amount of virus in the body may indeed be related to the severity of its course. This has been proven for some infections, but there is no such evidence for COVID-19. The WHO spokesman added that there is potentially a chance that it is not the virus that is getting weaker, but that people are getting stronger after they have been exposed to the virus longer.

“We have to be careful: it's still a killer virus,” Ryan said.

Francois Balloux of University College London commented on Zangrillo's comment for Science Media Center:

“There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 becomes more or less virulent or infectious. The genetic makeup of the virus population has not actually changed much since its inception."

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“The claim that the virus is abating is not currently based on established evidence. For the evidence to emerge, we would need to rule out other reasons why people are better at coping with infection,”Elisabetta Groppelli, a virologist at St George's College, University of London, told Science Media Center.

Groppelli added that diagnostics have improved in Italy, and this circumstance also affects the severity of the disease.

“Making such claims based on single observation of tests is dangerous. While mutational attenuation is theoretically possible, this is not what we should expect, and any claims of this kind should be verified more systematically. Without much stronger evidence, no one should diminish the dangers of this highly virulent virus and the risk it poses to society,”concluded Dr. Oscar MacLean of the University of Glasgow's Center for Viral Research.