Do not assume COVID pandemic reaching ‘end game’, warns WHO

The World Health Organization’s director-general on Monday warned that situations stay perfect for extra coronavirus variants to emerge and it’s harmful to imagine omicron is the final one or that “we are in the endgame.”
But Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus mentioned the acute section of the pandemic might nonetheless finish this 12 months if some key targets are met.
Tedros laid out an array of achievements and considerations in international well being over points like lowering tobacco use, preventing resistance to anti-microbial therapies, and dangers of local weather change on human well being. But he mentioned “ending the acute phase of the pandemic must remain our collective priority.”
“There are different scenarios for how the pandemic could play out and how the acute phase could end. But it’s dangerous to assume that omicron will be the last variant or that we are in the endgame,” Tedros informed the beginning of a WHO govt board assembly this week. “On the contrary, globally, the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge.”
But he insisted that “we can end COVID-19 as a global health emergency, and we can do it this year,” by reaching objectives like WHO’s goal to vaccinate 70 p.c of the inhabitants of every nation by the center of this 12 months, with a give attention to people who find themselves on the highest threat of COVID-19, and bettering testing and sequencing charges to trace the virus and its rising variants extra intently.
Omicron is much less more likely to trigger extreme sickness than the earlier delta variant, in accordance with research. Omicron spreads much more simply than different coronavirus strains, and has already turn into dominant in lots of nations. It additionally extra simply infects those that have been vaccinated or had beforehand been contaminated by prior variations of the virus.
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“It’s true that we will be living with COVID for the foreseeable future and that we will need to learn to manage it through a sustained and integrated system for acute respiratory diseases” to assist put together for future pandemics, Tedros mentioned. “But learning to live with COVID cannot mean that we give this virus a free ride. It cannot mean that we accept almost 50,000 deaths a week from a preventable and treatable disease.”
In stark phrases, Tedros additionally appealed for strengthening WHO and rising funding for it to assist stave off well being crises.
“Let me put it plainly: If the current funding model continues, WHO is being set up to fail,” he mentioned. “The paradigm shift in world health that is needed now must be matched by a paradigm shift in funding the world’s health organization.”
The head of WHO’s European area, Dr. Hans Kluge, mentioned individually in an announcement that omicron “offers plausible hope for stabilization and normalization,” however cautioned: “Our work is not done.” He was alluding to indicators that the brand new variant has proven to carry with it much less extreme illness, even when it’s extra transmissible.
He lamented “huge disparities” in entry to vaccines, and echoed considerations from different WHO officers that areas the place individuals are much less immunized might enable the virus to adapt — and presumably result in new variants.
Kluge provided a extra hopeful word, even when he mentioned “it is almost a given that new COVID-19 variants will emerge and return.”
He mentioned that practices like robust surveillance of recent variants, excessive vaccination uptake, common air flow of indoor areas, inexpensive equitable entry to antiviral medicine, focused testing, mask-wearing and bodily distancing, “if and when a new variant appears, I believe that a new wave could no longer require the return to pandemic-era population-wide lockdowns or similar measures,” he mentioned.