(Geneva) The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday that it would maintain its maximum alert level in the COVID-19 crisis, warning of a pandemic that “has surprised us before and could very well again”. do it.
Posted at 11:56
The WHO’s emergency committee met last week to discuss a possible lifting of the alert, but backed out of it, concluding that the pandemic still constituted a public health emergency of international concern (USPPI) .
“The committee has concluded that COVID-19 remains a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday.
On January 30, 2020, the WHO Emergency Committee reached consensus and classified the COVID-19 outbreak as an “international public health emergency” (USPPI).
Since then, the alert level had not been lowered. And Mr Tedros warned that “the virus continues to evolve and there remain many risks and uncertainties”.
“The pandemic has surprised us before and very well could again,” he warned.
The committee stressed the need to “expand access to tests, treatments and vaccines” and recommends that “all countries update their national plans” for the crisis.
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 622 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported to WHO and more than 6.5 million deaths. Figures considered very underestimated.
According to the WHO, 263,000 new cases have been reported in the past 24 hours. In the past week alone, 856 new deaths from COVID-19 have been reported across the world.