COVID-19 Deaths Last Week Lowest Since March 2020, End Of The Pandemic Is Near Says WHO Chief
Even as the world largely forgot about COVID-19 and started living as if it has gone away, the World Health Organisation (WHO) used to remind us that the pandemic is not over.
But now after nearly two-and-a-half years WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has indicated that the end of the pandemic could be near.
Weekly deaths was down 22 per cent? ?
Dr. Ghebreyesus Wednesday said that the number of weekly reported deaths from COVID-19 last week plunged to its lowest since March 2020 and added that the end of the pandemic is now in sight.
"We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic", the WHO chief said adding that, that the world is "not there yet".
During the week of September 5-11, the number of new weekly cases worldwide decreased by 28 per cent over the previous week to more than 3.1 million. The number of new weekly deaths was down 22 per cent to just under 11,000, as per WHO data.
In a winning position??
"A marathon runner does not stop when the finish line comes into view. She runs harder, with all the energy she has left. So must we. We can see the finish line. We're in a winning position. But now is the worst time to stop running", he said.
While the end of the pandemic is good news for the world, the WHO said that the world should remain cautious.
The virus is "circulating at a very intense level around the world at the present time. And, in fact, the number of cases that are being reported to the WHO we know are an underestimate," Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said.
Future waves will happen
"We feel there are far more cases that are actually circulating than are being reported to us," she added.
"We expect there to be future waves of infection, potentially at different time points throughout the world, caused by different subvariants of Omicron or even different variants of concern," she noted.
Those future waves of infection "do not need to translate into future waves of death, because we have tools that can prevent infections," she said.
Even as the pandemic wanes, people should maintain high levels of vigilance, said Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme.
The world is fighting "a highly mutable evolving virus that has shown us, time and time again in two-and-a-half years, how it can adapt and how it can change," Ryan added.
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