Research shows giraffes can use statistical reasoning. They’re the first animal with a relatively small brain known to do this

The Conversation
May 5, 2023

Giraffe (Shutterstock)

Humans make decisions using statistical information every day. Imagine you’re selecting a packet of jellybeans. If you prefer red jellybeans, you will probably try to find a packet that shows the most red (and less of the dreaded black ones) through the small window.

Since you can’t see all the jellybeans at once, you’re using statistical reasoning to make an informed decision. Even infants have this capability.

And as it turns out, humans aren’t alone in using statistical inferences to make decisions. Great apes, long-tailed macaques and keas have all been shown to use the relative frequencies of items to predict sampling events.

Now a new study has added giraffes to this list. The research, published today in Scientific Reports, shows giraffes can use statistical inferences to increase their likelihood of receiving carrot slices rather than zucchini – much like a human picking jellybeans.

The researchers worked with four giraffes – Nakuru (M), Njano (M), Nuru (F) and Yalinga (F) – living at the Zoo of Barcelona.

 Alvaro L. Caicoya, CC BY-NC

Brain size and statistical skills

Until now, primates and birds were the only animals to show evidence of statistical reasoning. Both are considered to have large brains relative to body size, which is often linked with higher intelligence.

Researchers at the University of Barcelona, University of Leipzig, and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology wanted to test whether an animal with a small brain relative to its body size could perform statistical reasoning.

Giraffes were an ideal choice. They have already demonstrated an ability to perform quantity discrimination (being able to tell a larger amount of items from a smaller amount), and their social systems and dietary breadth have been linked with the emergence of complex cognition.

How does a giraffe demonstrate statistical reasoning?

As it turns out, giraffes love carrots but have only a lukewarm appreciation for zucchinis, making these foods ideal to use in a statistical reasoning task.

Working with four giraffes, the researchers placed different proportions of carrot and zucchini slices into transparent containers to test if the giraffes could predict a higher likelihood of receiving a carrot in three tests of different treat quantities.


Each test consisted of 20 trials in which a researcher selected a piece of food from each container without showing the giraffe. The giraffe then touched the hand it wanted to eat from, using only the information it had from the containers.

The giraffes were reliably able to select the correct container in the trials of the first test, wherein the correct choice had both a higher quantity of carrots and lower quantity of zucchini slices.


In the second test, the quantity of carrots was the same in both containers, but the correct choice had fewer zucchini slices. Again, the giraffes were able to select correctly.

In the third test, the quantity of zucchini slices remained the same, but the correct container had a larger quantity of carrots. Yet again the giraffes chose correctly.


Each test of the experiment used different stimuli. Left to right: test 1, test 2 and test 3. Alvaro L. Caicoya et al/Scientific Reports

The combined results informed the researchers whether giraffes were using relative frequencies (statistical reasoning) or simply comparing absolute quantities of their preferred or non-preferred food.

Since the giraffes succeeded in all three tests, the researchers concluded they had used statistical inferences. If the giraffes had only been looking at the absolute quantities of the carrots, they would have succeeded in the first and second tests only, and failed the third.

Do you need a large brain for statistical reasoning?

Evidence of statistical reasoning in giraffes suggests relatively large brains are not required to evolve complex statistical skills – at least in vertebrates (animals with backbones). Furthermore, the authors propose the ability to make statistical inferences may actually be widespread in the animal kingdom.

The question now is: how many other animals with small brains relative to their body size could also succeed in this task?

Scarlett Howard, Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Gordon Lightfoot’s Death Is a Loss That Feels Personal

Lightfoot’s music created the soundtrack for the daily life of many Canadian families.

By Shawna Richer
May 6, 2023

NEW YORK TIMES

Canada Letter

When I was growing up, Gordon Lightfoot songs played on the living room stereo, on the radio in the kitchen and in the family car and on my dad’s guitar so continuously that it felt like the Canadian singer-songwriter, who died in a Toronto hospital on Monday at 84, lived with us.

[Read: Gordon Lightfoot, Hitmaking Singer-Songwriter, Is Dead at 84]

Nature and wilderness were central themes of Gordon Lightfoot’s music.

Credit...Reuters

I talked this week with my mom and dad, who are 82, about the musician who made the soundtrack to our lives. My father recalled the first time they saw Lightfoot, who had been making a name for himself in 1965 on the folk music scene in Toronto. He is near certain it was in a union hall in nearby Hamilton, a few years before I was born. Lightfoot was a part of my family before I was.

In the early days his 1966 debut record — “Lightfoot!” — lived on the turntable of our mahogany console stereo that took up nearly as much space as the couch, but was the far more essential piece of furniture.

As his popularity grew through the 1960s and ’70s, Lightfoot was prolific, releasing an album each year, and they stacked up at our place, leaning against the stereo and within easy reach. All the covers featured Lightfoot, sensitive and brooding. His good looks of the 1970s were lost on younger me. But Lightfoot was the one artist that my parents could always agree on playing any time at any volume. Saturday nights. Sunday mornings. Home alone. With a house full of company. It was always Lightfoot.

My dad learned to play his whole catalog by ear on an acoustic six-string.

Nature and the wilderness were central themes for Lightfoot, as they were for my mom and dad and for me and my younger brother. His sense of place made me curious about Canada beyond my backyard. His few political songs — particularly “Black Day in July,” about the Detroit race riots of 1967 — sparked a fascination with the United States.

“Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” a panoramic suite that tells the story of Canada’s founding in 1867, was a history class set to music. Lightfoot wrote perfect three-minute ballads and sweeping seven-minute narratives, what the American musician Steve Earle, in the excellent 2019 documentary “If You Could Read My Mind” called “story songs.”

[Read: Gordon Lightfoot’s 10 Essential Songs]

A Gordon Lightfoot album was packed with intrigue: songs about trains, shipwrecks, forests, lakes and rivers, with a throughline of melancholy that was mysterious and irresistible to an introverted kid who spent most of her time reading and writing.

I loved his melodic guitar and supple baritone. But his simple, succinct songs were a master class in narrative storytelling and wordcraft. Lightfoot’s songs, precise and profound, read like poems and unfolded like three-act plays.

[Read: Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ Was an Unlikely Hit]

Gordon Lightfoot’s funeral will take place in his hometown, Orillia, Ontario.

Credit...Cole Burston/Reuters

Everyone rightfully treasures “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” but as a kid I loved “Ballad of Yarmouth Castle,” which told the story of a steamship that caught fire and sank off Nassau, the Bahamas, in 1965. On the 1969 live album “Sunday Concert,” the moody, haunting song captivated and frightened me, and still does.

Plain-spoken imagery mingled with understated emotion, Lightfoot’s introspection fueled my own.

Canada lost something of itself this week. I read the nearly 1,400 comments (at the time of this writing) left by readers on the Times obituary, and related in some way to all of them.

“It is so emotional, so deeply rooted in my young, searching being,” Tim Snapp of Chico, Calif., wrote about Lightfoot’s music.

“For all my life, Gordon Lightfoot’s songs have been a steady anchor for my inner sadnesses,” wrote Rick Vitale, a retired mathematician from Wallingford, Conn. “Thanks, Bro … Hope to see you on the other side.”

My dad is eternally analog, but for Christmas in 2005, I gave him and my mom iPod Minis, loaded with hundreds of their favorite songs and artists, and songs I thought they would like. The lineup on each iPod was quite different, except for Lightfoot’s complete discography, which was on both.

My mom has moved on to streaming and satellite radio. My dad still listens to his old iPod at night when he’s falling asleep. The battery hasn’t held a charge in years. It stays plugged into a wall outlet.

On Tuesday, my dad said he would play some Lightfoot songs that evening on his guitar, a vintage El Degas red sunburst model that he’s strumming these days.

Play one for me, I said.

Lightfoot’s hits — celebrated on playlists published this week — are unspeakably good and timeless, but his deeper cuts are where I go more often. Here are 26 songs that I’ve been appreciating this week.

Canadians greet the coronation with a muted response.

The king’s representative in Canada, where he is head of state, recently appealed to people in the country to “give him a chance.”

King Charles III with Mary Simon, center, Canada’s governor general, and Indigenous leaders during an audience at Buckingham Palace in London on Thursday.

Credit...Pool photo by Gareth Fuller

By Vjosa Isai

NEW YORK TIMES
May 6, 2023

TORONTO — Despite his status as Canada’s head of state, only modest festivities have been planned this weekend for the coronation of King Charles III in the country’s capital, Ottawa, and turnout is predicted to be much lower than is typical for other Canadian public celebrations.

Last May, Charles’s most recent visit to the country drew scant news media attention and crowds by the hundreds rather than thousands.

When he became king upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, five months later, his ascension to the throne was greeted with such a shrug in the country that Mary Simon, the king’s representative in Canada, commented on it in a recent interview with the national broadcaster. She also cited public opinion polls in which respondents viewed Charles unfavorably.

“We need to give him a chance to show us that he is a good leader,” said Ms. Simon, Canada’s governor general. This weekend, she is part of a delegation from Canada, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and several Indigenous leaders, attending the coronation ceremony in London.

At a time when some other Commonwealth countries have been considering severing ties, Canada’s relationship to the British crown is the subject of recurring public debates. But that angst has never ripened into rebellion — in part because replacing the monarchy would require a gargantuan effort to amend Canada’s Constitution and, in doing so, raise complicated issues regarding the validity of the crown’s treaties with Indigenous peoples.

Quebec, originally a French-speaking colony that Britain conquered in 1763, has taken some steps to diminish the crown’s presence. In December, the province made it optional for elected officials to swear an oath of allegiance to the king. But Quebec was once also a bastion of loyalism to the monarchy, one with a 200-year history of staunch attachment to the crown, said Damien-Claude Bélanger, a history professor at the University of Ottawa who is writing a book on the subject.

Historically, the province’s upper class rallied around the monarchy as a civic, neutral institution that represented stability, he said.

“We’ve had nothing but monarchical continuity in our political system since the early 17th century,” he said, “and that stability, it means something to some people.”

Vjosa Isai reports for The Times from Toronto. More about Vjosa Isai

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Why the mafia loves Germany

Ben Knight

DW
May 6, 2023

The massive international raids on the Italian 'Ndrangheta organization have again put the spotlight on money laundering in Germany. Has organized crime found a haven in this country?

Coordinated raids against 'Ndrangheta organized crime syndicate across Europe this week attracted international headlines and generated explosive insider stories about the details of the investigation. What the raids didn't do was surprise seasoned mafia investigators.

"It won't change anything about mafia operations in Germany," said Petra Reski, a German journalist based in Italy who has spent years investigating mafia activities. "You can arrest a few people, but it doesn't change the structure."

Some 108 people were arrested in Italy and more than 30 more in Germany, following a more than three-year investigation called Operation Eureka into drug and arms trafficking. The ’Ndrangheta, which has its origins in Italy's southern Calabria region and is one of the richest and most powerful crime groups in Europe, is said to have built up a worldwide money-laundering operation to hide the money.

For Reski, who has written several books about the Italian mafia, this week's arrests brought a certain gratification, as some of those arrested had sued and threatened her over her reporting. In some cases, German courts have forced her to redact some of her books about organized crime activities.

"These are people at the heart of 'Ndrangheta, and I wrote about them in 2008 — I was the first to get sued and lost," she told DW. "For me personally it's gratifying because what I described has led to a result, thanks to the Italians."

Italy, Germany carry out large raids against 'Ndrangheta  01:38

Germany's reputation as safe haven

Although German police cooperated in the investigation, and some arrests were carried out in Germany, these were enforced under an international arrest warrant filed by the Italian authorities, Reski said. "These arrests couldn't have happened at all under German law," she told DW. "In Germany, just belonging to a mafia organization is not prosecutable. You have to be able to prove an actual crime as well."

Germany has long had a reputation as a safe haven for organized crime. This week, some 30 arrest warrants were executed the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Bavaria, Saarland and Thuringia.

The east German state of Thuringia became a mafia stronghold following the reunification of Germany in 1991 when the lack of interest from distracted law enforcement meant that the Italian mafia could buy swathes of real estate.

As long ago as 2012, Roberto Scarpinato, chief anti-mafia prosecutor from Palermo, Sicily, told the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, of "incredible flows of money from Italy to Germany," and highlighted loopholes in the anti-money laundering laws.

Money laundering in Germany

But Germany remains a very cash-friendly economy. To this day, unlike in other European Union countries, there is no limit on how much one can pay for a single transaction in cash: In Spain, the cap is €2,500 ($2,750), in Italy €1,000 and in Greece €500.

Current Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning a €10,000 cap in Germany, which would bring the country into line with an EU directive, but legal experts are already worrying about whether it conforms with the German constitution.

As things stand, you can also spend up to €10,000 in cash in Germany on most things without having to identify yourself (though since 2020 you do have to show ID when spending more than €2,000 on precious metals). All this makes it extremely easy for mafia groups to launder money in Germany.

Until April 2023, even real estate could be bought in cash, which could be particularly lucrative in cities like Berlin, where the property market promises astronomical profits.

In Germany, you can spend up to €10,000 in cash without even having to identify yourself

 
No transparency, no enforcement

The fact that organized crime groups have been taking advantage of this through opaque networks of shell companies has been public knowledge since 2016 when the Panama Papers were leaked.

"We can't call this a breakthrough, but maybe it's a partial success against parts of the mafia," said Andreas Frank, who has spent three decades investigating and writing about Germany's money laundering loopholes. "The 'Ndrangheta is something we've been confronted with for a long time."

Frank, whose 2022 book Dreckiges Geld ("Dirty Money") argued that laundered money was undermining democracy in Western Europe, is almost weary of describing what he sees as the lack of political will to tackle it.

"Has anything improved in fighting money laundering? No! Nothing at all," he told DW.
Consequences for the whole of society

Frank, who also testified before the Bundestag committee in 2012 alongside Scarpinato, thinks the damage that organized crime does is constantly underestimated.

"The mafia is highly dangerous, it undermines our economy," he said. "As a legitimate business, it's very hard to compete with mafia-led businesses. And the 'Ndrangheta is just one of many organizations."

On top of this, like in many other countries around the world, Germany's agencies have resource shortages. The German authority charged with tracking down money launderers, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), has been accused of being slow in reporting its suspicions to the relevant prosecutors.

In turn, the prosecutors usually operate at state level and often complain that they can't pursue crimes beyond their jurisdiction, which makes coordinating information extremely difficult.

Frank thinks the structural problems come down to a lack of personnel combined with inhibitions on the sharing of data between authorities. "It took years, up to 2021 and 2022, for the FIU to be allowed access to the data it needed," he told DW. "And even today it doesn't have full access."

For journalist Reski, the whole issue boils down to political will: "There is no political will in Germany to fight the mafia, that's the point," she concluded.

"Because German politicians see the mafia's investment as an economic driver. Money comes, and they don't want to know where it comes from."

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

Myanmar’s Prisoner Release Still Leaves Thousands Detained

Junta’s Gesture No Substitute for Lasting Human Rights Changes

Manny Maung
Myanmar Researcher, Asia Division

Former prisoners get off a bus after their release from Insein Prison in Yangon, Myanmar, May 3, 2023. 

© 2023 AP Photo/Thein Zaw

On Wednesday, Myanmar’s military junta announced it would release 2,153 prisoners. These include some convicted under section 505A of the Penal Code, which the junta has used to suppress peaceful dissent in the country. Families will welcome the releases of their loved ones, but the junta’s oppressive policies and practices remain unchanged.

Section 505A is a sweeping law that makes any criticism of the junta a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison. Many political activists arrested since the coup in February 2021 have been convicted by junta courts under section 505A.

The junta stated that the releases were based on “humanitarian grounds” and “for the peace of mind of people” ahead of a Buddhist holiday. It is not clear how many of those released are political prisoners: people arrested for the peaceful exercise of their political rights.

Myanmar traditionally marks Buddhist holidays by granting amnesties to prisoners, but data suggests that political prisoners make up only a small fraction of those released. In November last year, the junta released 402 political prisoners out of more than 5,000 prisoners amnestied, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP). In January, another amnesty released 7,000 prisoners, including 306 political prisoners. In April, just 13 political prisoners were among 3,000 prisoners released.

The junta should immediately be releasing all its political prisoners: 17,000 people who should not have been arrested in the first place. The relatively few released each amnesty really just shows that the junta still does not recognize their detentions are unlawful.

Myanmar’s military juntas have long used amnesties as a tool to gain credibility and deflate international pressure ahead of global events. It is unsurprising that the latest amnesty comes ahead of an important meeting of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

ASEAN foreign ministers should not be fooled when they meet in Indonesia on May 9. They should avoid lending credibility to the military junta and instead press for the release of all political prisoners, an end to abuses against the junta’s critics, and the return of Myanmar to civilian democratic rule.

Rohingya won’t return to Myanmar to be ‘confined in camps’

UNHCR officers check on Rohingya refugees at a temporary shelter following their arrival in Ladong in Aceh Province on February 17, 2023. (AFP)

Reuters
Published: 06 May ,2023

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh said on Saturday they would not return to Myanmar to “be confined in camps” after making a visit to the country as part of efforts to encourage their voluntary repatriation.

Nearly one million Rohingya Muslims are living in camps in the Bangladeshi border district of Cox’s Bazar, most after fleeing a military-led crackdown in Buddhist-majority Myanmar in 2017.

Twenty Rohingya Muslim refugees and seven Bangladeshi officials visited Maungdaw Township and nearby villages in Rakhine State on Friday to see the arrangements for resettlement.

Rohingya have expressed discontent with the preparations for repatriation and said they will not go back unless their security can be guaranteed and they can be sure of being granted citizenship.


“We don’t want to be confined in camps. We want to get back our land and we will build our own houses there,” Oli Hossain, who was among the refugees who visited Rakhine State, told Reuters by phone.

“We’ll only return with citizenship and all our rights,” said the 36-year-old Hossain, father of six children.

Myanmar is offering Rohingya national verification cards (NVC), which Rohingya refugees regard as inadequate.

“Myanmar is our birthplace and we are citizens of Myanmar and will go back with citizenship,” said refugee Abu Sufian, 35.

“We’ll never accept NVC. This will effectively identify Rohingya as ‘foreigners’,” he told Reuters, adding that Myanmar authorities “even changed the name of my village in Rakhine.”

Bangladeshi officials have made several trips to Myanmar as part of efforts to get repatriation going, but this was the first by Rohingya refugees since 2017.

A Myanmar junta spokesman did not answer calls seeking comment.

Myanmar’s military had until recently shown little inclination to take back any Rohingya, who have for years been regarded as foreign interlopers in Myanmar and denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.

A Myanmar delegation, however, visited the camps in March to verify a few hundred returnees for a pilot repatriation project.

A Bangladesh official said the project would involve about 1,100 refugees but no date had been set. Attempts to get repatriation going in 2018 and 2019 failed as the refugees, fearing violence, refused to go back.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reiterated that “every refugee has an inalienable right to return to their home country. Refugee returns must be voluntary, in safety and dignity - based on an informed choice, but no refugee should be forced to do so.”

“UNHCR maintains that dialogue with the Rohingya refugees is a must to make an informed decision,” it said in a statement.

“... visits are an important part of voluntary refugee returns, providing a chance for people to observe conditions in their home country first hand ahead of return and contributing to the making of an informed decision on return,” it added.

Taliban ruling through extreme forms of misogyny, say UN experts

This came following UN experts eight-day visit to Afghanistan. UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett was also a part of the visit.

ANI | Updated: 06-05-2023

UN experts in their findings on the state of human rights and discrimination against Afghan women in Afghanistan, said that the Taliban through its "most extreme forms of misogyny" has been destroying the relative progress towards gender equality achieved in the past two decades in the country, Afghanistan based Khaama Press reported. This came following UN experts' eight-day visit to Afghanistan. UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett was also a part of the visit.

The mission took place from April 27 to May 4 in the context of a chronic humanitarian crisis and profound turmoil due to the most recent verdict banning Afghan women from working with the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, Khaama Press reported. The UN report said: "Since the collapse of the Republic, the de facto authorities have dismantled the legal and institutional framework and have been ruling through the most extreme forms of misogyny, destroying the relative progress towards gender equality achieved in the past two decades. The Taliban impose certain interpretations of religion that appear not to be shared by the vast majority of Afghans."

Several organisations continue to provide crucial humanitarian assistance and protection to the most marginalized people in the country. The Taliban said that the women were working in the health, and education sectors, stressing that women could work according to Sharia, separated from men. The Taliban has said women's rights are an internal affair and that the international community should not interfere.

"The de facto authorities reiterated their message that they were working on reopening schools, without providing a clear timeline and indicated that the international community should not interfere in the country's internal affairs," according to the UN report. Based on the UN report, women and girls' lives in the country are devastated by the crackdown on their human rights.

"We are alive, but not living," said one of the woman interlocutors stated in the report. The report concluded, "We urge the de facto authorities to comply with their obligations under international human rights instruments to which Afghanistan is a State party, especially CEDAW, and honour their commitments towards protecting and promoting all women's and girls' rights", according to Khaama Press. 

(ANI)

Senegalese veterans return home after France's U-turn on pension rights 

• FRANCE 24 English

 

U$ FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE

Report: Noncitizens Will Account for One-third of Uninsured Population in 2024

A recent Urban Institute report found that the uninsurance rate for nonelderly people who aren’t citizens will be 39.2% in 2024, about four times higher than it is for the entire U.S. population at 9.8%.

By MARISSA PLESCIA
/ May 4, 2023 





Adults under the age of 65 who are noncitizens are expected to represent about one-third of the country’s 27 million uninsured in 2024 — even though this group only accounts for 8% of the total nonelderly population in the U.S., a new report showed.

The report, published Thursday, was conducted by the Urban Institute and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. For the analysis, the researchers used the Urban Institute’s Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model, which estimates how healthcare policy options will affect cost and coverage.

It comes after the Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a rule that would permit Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients — also known as Dreamers — to apply for coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace or through their state Medicaid organization. HHS predicts the rule could lead to 129,000 DACA recipients gaining coverage. The Urban Institute’s analysis, however, does not include the effects of the proposed rule.

The researchers found that in 2024, the uninsurance rate for nonelderly people who aren’t citizens will be 39.2%, about four times higher than it is for the entire U.S. population at 9.8%.

“As the uninsurance rate has declined, noncitizens comprise a growing share of those without coverage,” said Katherine Hempstead, senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in a news release. “The recent proposed rule regarding DACA recipients illustrates the need for expanding eligibility regardless of immigration status if we want to attain universal coverage.”

The report also showed that 36% of those who are noncitizens have employer-sponsored insurance, lower than the total nonelderly population in the U.S. at 54.4%.

In addition, more than 80% of uninsured noncitizens have at least one family member who is employed. However, many aren’t working for companies with employer-sponsored insurance, according to the Urban Institute.

This population is also less likely to have insurance through the government: just 16.5% of those who are uninsured and noncitizens are eligible for Medicaid, CHIP or subsidized Marketplace coverage. Two-thirds of this group are ineligible because of their immigration status.

“Despite some efforts to cover certain lawfully present noncitizens and the availability of Marketplace options, only 16.5% of uninsured noncitizens gained eligibility for Medicaid, CHIP, or Marketplace premium tax credits,” said Matthew Buettgens, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, in a statement. “States have several options to extend coverage to noncitizens and undocumented immigrants and expand overall health coverage in the United States.”

Photo: alexsl, Getty Images

WHO Says Impossible to Globally Eradicate COVID-19 Due to Transmission Routes

 6 May 2023 

It is impossible to completely eliminate COVID-19 because its transmission routes from animals to humans complicate the situation, but we are able to address its consequences and possible healthcare emergencies, Executive Director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme Dr Michael Ryan said on Saturday.

"No. I do not believe so. There is very specific criteria when you can eliminate or eradicate a virus ... What we see here is a virus that's evolved quickly, it can move from humans to animals and from animals to humans, so it can hide in different spaces, not just in humans. It is very hard to speak about an eradication or elimination in this case," Ryan told a question-and-answer session, Azernews reports.

He also said that it was possible to eliminate "the public health threat provoked by the virus" through the vaccination and treatment, adding that "we can end the emergency, but we cannot end the virus."

"So, can we eliminate the [COVID-19] virus? I think the answer is very unlikely, if not impossible," Ryan noted.

On Friday, the WHO's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the organization no longer considered COVID-19 a global health emergency, emphasizing that the infection still posed a threat to the health of the human population.

•