WHO Chief warns against COVID-19 infections surge, says 'pandemic is nowhere near over'

As the cases of COVID-19 rapidly increase in several countries, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he is concerned about the COVID-related deaths and added the latest trend shows that the pandemic is "nowhere near over." While addressing the media on Tuesday, he said that the Emergency Committee on Coronavirus met on Friday last week and concluded that the virus remains a "public health emergency of international concern". Citing the committee findings, he warned that sub-variants of Omicron, like BA.4 and BA.5, continue to drive waves of cases, hospitalisation and death around the world.

He emphasised that the world has reduced monitoring of the lethal virus significantly – including testing and sequencing. The ignorance of the monitoring makes it increasingly difficult to assess the impact of variants on transmission, disease characteristics, and the effectiveness of counter-measures, the WHO chief noted. "The virus is running freely and countries are not effectively managing the disease burden based on their capacity, in terms of both hospitalisation for acute cases and the expanding number of people with the post-COVID-19 condition - often referred to as long-covid. Finally, there is a major disconnect in COVID-19 risk perception between scientific communities, political leaders and the general public," he said. 

WHO chief highlights Recommendations of the Committee 

• New waves of the virus demonstrate again that COVID-19 is nowhere near over. 
• As the virus pushes at us, we must push back. 
• We’re in a much better position than at the beginning of the pandemic.
• Of course, there’s been a lot of progress.
• We have safe and effective tools that prevent infections, hospitalizations and deaths.
• Effective tools should not be taken for granted.
• Governments should also work to reverse the reduction in surveillance, testing and sequencing, and share anti-virals effectively.

Ghebreyesus underscores the importance of vaccine to create wall of immunity

Before concluding the presser, Ghebreyesus underscored the importance of the vaccination and said it has already saved millions of lives and it's important for governments to focus on boosting those most at-risk communities. He also urged the government to find out the unvaccinated population in order to build up the wall of immunity toward the 70% vaccination target. "As COVID-19 transmission and hospitalisations rise, governments must also deploy tried and tested measures like masking, improved ventilation and test and treatment protocols," added the WHO chief.

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