The head of the World Health Organization has cautioned that the coronavirus outbreak is “nowhere near over,” citing new waves around the globe and raising concern that the virus is “running freely.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed concern that the number of cases was continuing to climb, “putting further pressure on stretched health systems and health workers”.
“As the virus pushes at us, we must push back. We’re in a much better position than at the beginning of the pandemic,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday in Geneva.
“Of course, there’s been a lot of progress. We have safe and effective tools that prevent infections, hospitalizations and deaths. However, we should not take them for granted.”
Tedros advised governments to deploy tried and tested measures like masking, improved ventilation and test and treat protocols” in the face of increased COVID transmission and hospitalization rates.
The WHO’s emergency committee for the pandemic met via video conference on Friday and finally agreed that the pandemic is still a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, which is the highest alarm the WHO can sound.
Meanwhile, Omicron sub-variants BA.4, BA.5, as well as the lifting of public health and social measures, contributed significantly to a 30 percent spike in global COVID cases reported to the WHO in the last two weeks, according to WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan.
According to Ryan, recent shifts in testing policies have made it more difficult to spot infections and track the evolution of viruses.
As the effects of a pandemic brought on by a new respiratory virus would not be completely understood, the committee emphasized the need to prevent virus transmission, the WHO said in a statement on Monday.
The group expressed worry over sharp testing cuts that would lead to less surveillance and genome sequencing.
This, according to the WHO, “impedes assessments of currently circulating and emerging variants of the virus,” making it harder to understand trends in transmission.
The committee said that the path of virus evolution and the traits of new variants were still “uncertain and unpredictable,” and that the lack of measures to stop transmission made it more likely that “new, fitter variants with different degrees of virulence, transmissibility, and immune escape potential” would appear.
European boosters
Separately on Tuesday, the WHO’s European division suggested an additional COVID booster dose for vulnerable populations, including the elderly.
The request came after the EU’s health and medicine agencies recommended on Monday that anyone over 60 receive a second booster dose.
Hans Kluge, WHO’s regional director for Europe, stated in a statement that “the updated interim recommendations on vaccination strategy come as cases continue to rise across the European Region.”
The health organization supported “a second booster dose to moderately and severely immuno-compromised individuals aged five years and above and their close contacts” due to the increase in infections.
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