MOSCOW: As more people become infected with the new coronavirus globally, hopes are that the pandemic will exhaust itself to never repeat at the same scale again, the chief executive of Russian pharmaceutical company R-Pharm told Sputnik in an interview.
“The herd immunity will grow, and such outbreaks and waves of infections are unlikely to happen again. The main problem now is that no one is immune,” Vasily Ignatiev said.
He suggested that coronavirus infections could become seasonal like flu, coming in the winter and subsiding as soon as it gets warm.
The scientist, who also serves as vice chair at the Moscow-based Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, said Covid-19 has a “potential for mutation” but is likely to get less deadly with time.
“As a rule, this kind of viruses start out as more aggressive strains whose virulence usually weakens as they jump from host to host,” he explained.
R-Pharm is in the early stages of bioengineering a molecule designed to fuse with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and prevent it from entering human cells.
An infected cell produces more viruses before dying, which leads to inflammation in the lungs and can be fatal.
After the virus is trapped by the molecule, it is expelled from the body with exhaled air or mucus. – Bernama
