ITALIAN DOCTOR CLAIMS COVID-19 IS WEAKENING; OTHERS DISAGREE

COVID-19 is much less dangerous than it used to be, Prof. Matteo Bassetti, a leading Italian infectious diseases specialist has said. It has weakened from being like an "aggressive tiger" to a "wild cat," Bassetti told the Sunday Telegraph and Kit Heren of Evening Standard on June 22, 2020.

By weakening on its own and could even die out without the need for a vaccine he maintained, but other experts disagreed and criticized Bassetti for being overoptimistic.

Bassett, an infectious disease expert at the San Martino Hospital in Genoa,   said: "It was like an aggressive tiger in March and April but now it's like a wild cat. Even elderly patients, aged 80 or 90, are now sitting up in bed and they are breathing without help. The same patients would have died in two or three days before. The clinical impression I have is that the virus is changing in severity. In March and early April the patterns were completely different. People were coming to the emergency department with a very difficult to manage illness and they needed oxygen and ventilation, some developed pneumonia. Now, in the past four weeks, the picture has completely changed in terms of patterns."

But other scientists have disagreed strongly with Professor Bassetti's claims - and even called them "dangerous" for possibly giving people a false sense of security. Dr. Oscar MacLean of the University of Glasgow hit out at Bassetti's comments in early June: "These claims are not supported by anything in the scientific literature, and also seem fairly implausible on genetic grounds... Making these claims on the basis of anecdotal observations from swab tests is dangerous. Whilst weakening of the virus through mutations is theoretically possible, it is not something we should expect, and any claims of this nature would need to be verified in a more systematic way.” Dr. Angela Rasmussen of the Columbia University in New York, said: "Without significantly stronger evidence, no one should unnecessarily downplay the danger this highly virulent virus poses, and risk the ongoing society-wide response. "There is no evidence that the virus is losing potency anywhere."