The COVID-19 pandemic is “far from over”, World Health Organization (WHO) director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced Tuesday at a press conference in Geneva.
“As the virus breaks through, we need to push it back,” Dr Tedros said, adding, “The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. »
“As hospitalizations and transmission of COVID-19 increase, governments must deploy tried and tested measures like mask-wearing, improved ventilation, and testing and treatment protocols,” he added.
The number of COVID cases worldwide has jumped 30% in the past two weeks — a rise primarily fueled by Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, said Dr. WHO, during the press conference.
As of July 11, the WHO has identified more than 552.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide, including 232.3 million in Europe, for more than 6.3 million deaths since the start of the pandemic.
According to Our World in Data, as of the same date, 61.3% of the world’s population has a complete vaccination schedule, while 66.8% has received at least one dose of vaccine.
The virus circulates freely
Dr. Ryan also pointed to the lifting of health and social distancing measures, as well as the drop in screenings, which complicate the monitoring of the pandemic.
“The virus continues to circulate freely, and states are not effectively distributing the disease burden according to their capacities, both for hospitalizations for severe cases and the growing number of people in post-COVID state, often referred to as long COVID” (or long-lasting COVID), Dr. Tedros added.
The two WHO leaders spoke on the sidelines of the WHO’s release of the results of the latest COVID-19 Emergency Committee meeting, which was held last Friday.
The UN agency has thus announced the maintenance of the COVID-19 pandemic at the rank of “public health emergency of international concern”, the highest level of alert of the organization, following a unanimous decision of the Committee.
The latter points to the decline in screening and genomic sequencing, which make it “increasingly difficult” to assess the impact of SARS-CoV-2 variants, and underlines “the inadequacy of current surveillance”. of the pandemic.
The Committee nevertheless notes the recent increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in different regions of the world, as well as the lack of implementation of appropriate public health measures in regions affected by a resurgence of cases.
The European branch of the health agency, for its part, recommended on Tuesday a second booster dose of the vaccine against COVID-19 for vulnerable people, while nearly 7 million cases have been recorded on the continent over the past of the last 7 days.