Coronavirus might never go away, so populations around the world should be prepared to live with it, the World Health Organization, WHO has said.

As nations across the globe begin to ease lockdown restrictions imposed to curb its spread, WHO recently came out to say that the virus might never be wiped out entirely.

According to Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies director, it is very hard to predict when the pandemic will be over since it might not go away just like the HIV disease that is still with us.

He added that the world will have to come to terms with the virus and live with it until a cure is found.

His words, “We have a new virus entering the human population for the first time and therefore it is very hard to predict when we will prevail over it,”

“This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away,”

“HIV has not gone away — but we have come to terms with the virus.”

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus added, “Many countries would like to get out of the different measures,”

“But our recommendation is still the alert at any country should be at the highest level possible.”

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Coronaviruses are a group of related viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans, coronaviruses cause respiratory tract infections that can be mild, such as some cases of the common cold (among other possible causes, predominantly rhinoviruses), and others that can be lethal, such as SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. Symptoms in other species vary: in chickens, they cause an upper respiratory tract disease, while in cows and pigs they cause diarrhea. There are yet to be vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human coronavirus infections.

Coronaviruses constitute the subfamily Orthocoronavirinae, in the family Coronaviridae, order Nidovirales, and realm Riboviria. They are enveloped viruses with a positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome and a nucleocapsid of helical symmetry. The genome size of coronaviruses ranges from approximately 27 to 34 kilobases, the largest among known RNA viruses. The name coronavirus is derived from the Latin corona, meaning “crown” or “halo”, which refers to the characteristic appearance reminiscent of a crown or a solar corona around the virions (virus particles) when viewed under two-dimensional transmission electron microscopy, due to the surface covering in club-shaped protein spikes.

Human coronaviruses were first discovered in the late 1960s. The earliest ones discovered were an infectious bronchitis virus in chickens and two in human patients with the common cold (later named human coronavirus 229E and human coronavirus OC43). Other members of this family have since been identified, including SARS-CoV in 2003, HCoV NL63 in 2004, HKU1 in 2005, MERS-CoV in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2 (formerly known as 2019-nCoV) in 2019. Most of these have involved serious respiratory tract infections.

The name “coronavirus” is derived from Latin corona, meaning “crown” or “wreath”, itself a borrowing from Greek κορώνη korṓnē, “garland, wreath”. The name refers to the characteristic appearance of virions (the infective form of the virus) by electron microscopy, which have a fringe of large, bulbous surface projections creating an image reminiscent of a crown or of a solar corona. This morphology is created by the viral spike peplomers, which are proteins on the surface of the virus.