End game for COVID? Predicting a quick end to the pandemic is premature, WHO chief warns

The World Health Organization’s director-general on [January 24] warned that conditions remain ideal for more coronavirus variants to emerge and it’s dangerous to assume omicron is the last one or that “we are in the endgame.”

But Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the acute phase of the pandemic could still end this year if some key targets are met.

“We can end COVID-19 as a global health emergency, and we can do it this year,” by reaching goals like WHO’s target to vaccinate 70% of the population of each country by the middle of this year, with a focus on people who are at the highest risk of COVID-19, and improving testing and sequencing rates to track the virus and its emerging variants more closely.

…

Share this article

XLinkedInFacebookRedditBlueskyThreadsSMSEmail

“It’s true that we will be living with COVID for the foreseeable future and that we will need to learn to manage it through a sustained and integrated system for acute respiratory diseases” to help prepare for future pandemics, Tedros said.

“But learning to live with COVID cannot mean that we give this virus a free ride. It cannot mean that we accept almost 50,000 deaths a week from a preventable and treatable disease.”

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here.