deaths linked to the disease have fallen by 95% since January, announces the WHO

The virus is still circulating, but causing fewer deaths. The number of deaths caused by Covid-19 has dropped by 95% since the start of the year, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday April 27. Despite this encouraging figure, the organization specifies that the virus is not about to disappear. “Several countries are seeing a resurgence and in the last four weeks 14,000 people have died from this disease”, lamented its director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. According to him, as shown by the emergence of the XBB.1.16 variant, “the virus continues to mutate and is still capable of causing new waves of infections and deaths..

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The WHO also invites countries around the world to learn how to manage its consequences outside of emergency situations, such as the effects felt by some people who have contracted a long Covid. He also clarified that one in ten infections resulted in a long Covid. He also suggested that hundreds of millions of people could require long-term care.

Maria Van Kerkhove, who leads the fight against Covid at the WHO, added that the XBB variant and its sub-variants were now globally dominant. They are able to evade immune protection, which means that vaccinated or already infected people are likely to contract the disease again.