BackCOVID remains an international crisis: WHO alerts amid 40,000 deaths last week
I remain very concerned by the situation in many countries and the rising number of deaths, WHO chief said last week
PremiumThe World Health Organization (WHO) stated again on Monday that the pandemic remains an international crisis. The union health agency also agreed that COVID still remains a dangerous infectious disease with the capacity to cause substantial damage to health and health system
This comes only 2 days after the WHO notified that over 40,000 people died of COVID in just a week's time
"The WHO director-general concurs with the advice offered by the committee regarding the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and determines that the event continues to constitute a public health emergency of international concern," the UN health agency said in a statement.
Meanwhile, speaking at the opening of WHO's annual executive board meeting, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “there is no doubt that we're in a far better situation now" than a year ago — when the highly transmissible Omicron variant was at its peak. However, hinted that it still remains a risk
On Friday, WHO notified that in the past week, almost 40,000 deaths were reported, and more than half were reported from China alone. In total, over the past 8 weeks, over 170 thousand deaths have been recorded, actual numbers are higher.
He called for at-risk groups to be fully vaccinated, an increase in testing and early use of antivirals, an expansion of lab networks, and a fight against “misinformation" about the pandemic.
"We remain hopeful that in the coming year, the world will transition to a new phase in which we reduce hospitalizations and deaths to the lowest possible level," he said.
The comments came moments after WHO released findings of its emergency committee on the pandemic which reported that some 13.1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered — with nearly 90 per cent of health workers and more than four in five people over 60 years of age having completed the first series of jabs.
“The committee acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic may be approaching an inflexion point," WHO said in a statement. Higher levels of immunity worldwide through vaccination or infection “may limit the impact" of the virus that causes COVID-19 on “morbidity and mortality," the committee said.
“(B)ut there is little doubt that this virus will remain a permanently established pathogen in humans and animals for the foreseeable future," it said. While Omicron versions are easily spread, “there has been a decoupling between infection and severe disease" compared to that of earlier variants.
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