Orange with Media Services, published on saturday 03 december 2022 at 08h21
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned against the temptation to prematurely assert that the emerging phase of the pandemic is over: “we are not there yet”, a- he alerted.
The result of vaccination, or previous infection. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 90% of the world’s population presents a form of immunity against Covid-19, declared its general manager Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press conference on Friday December 2, while warning against the reduced alertness.
This leaves the door open to the emergence of a new variant likely to spread and supplant the currently dominant Omicron variant.
“The WHO estimates that at least 90% of the world’s population currently has some form of immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, through previous infection or vaccination”, he explained, referring to the virus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic. WHO chief warned against temptation to affirm prematurely that the emerging phase of the pandemic is over. “We are not there yet,” he lamented. “Gaps in surveillance, testing, sequencing and vaccination continue to create the perfect conditions for the emergence of a concerning new variant that could cause significant mortality,” he warned.
Over 500 Omicron sub-variants in circulation
The Omicron variant, which was declared a new variant of concern by the WHO a year ago, has since spread around the world, proving much more contagious than its predecessor Delta. According to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, more than 500 sub-variants of Omicron are currently circulatingall of which are highly contagious and have mutations that make them able to overcome immune barriers more easily, although they cause less severe forms of the disease than the previous variants.
A total of 6.6 million deaths have been reported by countries to WHO, while nearly 640 million confirmed cases have been recorded. But the real toll is much heavier, according to the WHO. Over the past week, more than 8,500 deaths from Covid-19 were recorded, “which is not not acceptable after three years of a pandemic, when we have so many tools to prevent infections and save lives”, justified Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.