Ignacio López-Goñi: “It is a silent bad bug: whoever transmits it almost never finds out”

Professor of Microbiology at the University of Navarra (Pamplona, ​​1962) and tireless disseminator from his blog 'MicroBIO' and on Twitter, this Tuesday, starting at 17.00:XNUMX p.m., he offers a videoconference with Fundación Ibercaja that can also be followed on Heraldo.es.

This afternoon he offers the videoconference 'First day after the state of alarm. Reflections from science'. There is no longer a state of alarm. And now that?

Just because there is no longer a state of alarm does not mean that the pandemic is over. We must be very cautious and cautious; We have not defeated the virus and we probably will not defeat it. We have only eradicated two viral diseases: smallpox and rinderpest... and smallpox, after two hundred years of vaccination.

With the desire we have to forget about him...

It is very likely – although with viruses you can never be sure – that it will evolve, adapt better to its new host, which is us, and weaken until it becomes endemic, but it will take years, it will not disappear. As immunity increases in the population, either due to having been infected or because we have managed to vaccinate a large number of people, the following waves will become more manageable. But let's not forget that it is a silent bad bug, due to its molecular abilities to infect and because most of the people who transmit it do not even realize it.

Without a night curfew and more mobility, are you going to change your way of acting at all?

Although I am not very nocturnal, I will no longer be in a hurry to have to be home at 11 and I may consider going out to dinner as a couple or with two friends. But I will continue to avoid crowded, closed and poorly ventilated places.

Lifting some restrictions does not mean relaxing others.

We must repeat the message – which is finally beginning to penetrate, after a year, in our authorities – of the importance of aerosols, better outside than inside, mask in closed places...

Would you reinforce any measures?

From now on, several measures will have to be combined: vaccination is one of them - although it is not a magic wand to say "I'm already vaccinated, long live Pepa" -; and we would have to bet on antigen tests. We need them to be very cheap to be able to repeat them quickly because, being less sensitive than PCR, they can give false negatives.

Since we can travel again, should tracing be intensified?

We cannot let our guard down with tracking and the variant surveillance system will have to be reinforced. There will be less pressure, we will have time and we should see how the virus evolves, sequence as many samples as possible. That rapid diagnostic systems be established in medical services to differentiate the coronavirus from the flu and other respiratory viruses, preparing us for next winter.

What has gone wrong in the management of this crisis?

I would ask for greater coordination from our authorities. There has been an excess of politicization: each one has gone about his business, to his revolution, to his republic, to his elections or to his motion of censure, and there has been a lack of a great State pact to get out of this as soon as possible, so that the Science and healthcare do not touch each other, because when healthcare collapses, the entire system collapses. And this is a global problem, not a regional one: what happens in Zaragoza greatly influences Asturias and Madrid, and what happens in Spain influences Portugal and Germany, even what happens in India ends up influencing Europe. There is also a lack of leadership at the international level.

Does a scientist on the front line of covid communication like you have pandemic fatigue?

Yes. What exhausts the most is the immediacy that the media asks of you..., sometimes to fill in little gaps with a statement.

It raises a topical question: would releasing patents help?

It is not that easy, countries have to have the capacity to manufacture vaccines. I bet more on collaboration and international solidarity.