Do Not Assume COVID-19 to be at its End: WHO Chief

On Monday, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) director-general said it would be unwise to presume that the highly transmissible Omicron strain was final to emerge as well as that the pandemic had reached its ‘end game.’

But, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that if tactics and tools like diagnostics and vaccines are employed comprehensively, it is feasible to leave the acute stages of the pandemic this year, wherein COVID-19 is a worldwide health emergency.

There are several possible outcomes about how the pandemic will unfold and how the acute stage will finish. On the other, global conditions are favorable for the emergence of new variations. But do not assume omicron to be the last variety or that we’ve reached the end of the road,” Tedros said at the start of a WHO executive board meet that took this week.

But he kept insisting that COVID-19 can be declared a worldwide medical crisis and that we would do so this year by meeting goals such as the WHO’s goal of vaccinating 70% of the population of every nation by the middle of the year, with an impact on individuals who are most at danger of COVID-19, as well as improving testing as well as sequencing prices to start tracking the virus as well as its arising variants.

To assist preparation for upcoming pandemics, he added, “it is true that we shall be dealing with COVID for the years ahead and also that we would need to learn to handle it via a sustained as well as integrated system for acute respiratory disorders.”

However, learning to reside with COVID does not imply that we should give the virus a pass. This can imply that we tolerate nearly 50,000 fatalities every week from an illness that is both preventable and curable.

Tedros also called for the WHO to be strengthened along with its budget to increase for helping the prevention of the health issues. He believes that the fundamental change in global health that is currently required must be accompanied by a paradigm shift in finance for the world’s health organizations. To put it bluntly, if the current funding mechanism is maintained, WHO is doomed to fail.