The world must accept that COVID-19 is with us for the foreseeable future, even if it is possible to end the acute phase of the pandemic this year, WHO Chief Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, has said.
Dr Tedros noted that on average last week, 100 cases were reported every three seconds, and somebody lost their life to the coronavirus every 12 seconds. It is still “dangerous to assume that Omicron will be the last variant, or that we are in the endgame” of the pandemic, he said.
On the contrary, the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge, he added, exactly two years and a day since he declared the deadly virus a public health emergency of international concern. In an appeal to the WHO Member States, Tedros said that their top priorities should be to stop future health threats from taking hold and causing such massive disruption to health systems, economies and societies the world over.
To do this, all States should promote health and wellbeing, preventing disease by addressing its root causes, he said, in a call for a renewed focus on primary healthcare for everyone. On tackling the coronavirus specifically, Tedros urged better management of acute respiratory diseases, via a sustained and integrated international platform, to coordinate preparedness against future pandemics.
Two years into the pandemic, with almost 350 million cases reported and more than 5.5 million deaths – numbers known to be an underestimate – Tedros insisted that many other measures needed to be implemented to protect the most vulnerable.
“Learning to live with COVID cannot mean that we give this virus a free ride,” he noted. “It cannot mean that we accept almost 50,000 deaths a week, from a preventable and treatable disease. It cannot mean that we accept an unacceptable burden on our health systems, when every day, exhausted health workers go once again to the front line.”
Repeating his call for all countries to vaccinate 70 per cent of their populations to help bring an end to the acute phase of the pandemic, the WHO Director-General said that 86 States across all regions had been unable to reach last year’s target of vaccinating 40 per cent of their populations.
More than 30 countries – mostly in Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean – have not vaccinated even 10 per cent of their populations and 85 per cent of people in Africa are yet to receive a single dose of vaccine.
While vaccines remain a key part of the COVID-19 exit strategy, Tedros re-emphasized the importance of equitable access to diagnostics, oxygen and antivirals, too. He added that better testing and sequencing of the virus was also needed to track the virus closely and monitor the emergence of new variants.
On a positive note, Tedros insisted that progress was being made to tackle long-running treatment disparities, thanks to the UN-partnered COVAX initiative, which had delivered its one billionth dose just a week ago, and which had also shipped more vaccines in the past 10-weeks “than in the previous 10-months combined”.
WHO’s WHO Regional Director for Europe Dr Hans Kluge said that although the SARS-CoV-2 crisis was far from over, he was hopeful of seeing the end of the emergency phase in 2022. “While Omicron appears to cause much less severe disease than Delta, we are still seeing a rapid rise in hospitalizations, due to the sheer number of infections,” he said.
FOR MORE CLICK HERE
