On Friday, World Health Organization director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said gaps in strategies to deal with Corona this year continue to create ideal conditions for a new variant to emerge, as parts of China they are seeing an increase in the number of virus cases.
“We’re this close to being able to say that,” Tedros said The pandemic emergency phase is over. But we haven’t reached that goal yet.”
The organization estimates that around 90% of the world’s population has some level of immunity against corona, either due to a previous infection or having received a vaccine.
From the Corona vaccination campaign in China
But Tedros said “testing and vaccination gaps continue to create the conditions for the emergence of a worrying new variant that could cause many deaths.”
Tedros indicated that the decrease in vigilance leaves the door open for the emergence of a new mutant that could spread and replace the current Omicron mutant.
Omicron, announced by the World Health Organization a year ago, is a disturbing new variant that has since spread around the world, proving to be far more contagious than its predecessor, Delta.
And according to Tedros, it’s now spreading More than 500 submutants All Omicrons are highly contagious and carry mutations that make them more easily able to cross immune barriers, although they cause less severe forms of disease than previous variants.
Last week, more than 8,500 deaths due to Corona were recorded worldwide, which Tedros considered “unacceptable after three years of a pandemic, at a time when we have many tools to avoid contagion and save lives”.
in turn, China is currently setting records of corona infections, and the number of cases has also started to rise in Britain after declining for months.
Protests against Corona restrictions in China
The easing of corona testing requirements and quarantine rules in some Chinese cities was met on Friday with a mixture of relief and anxiety as hundreds of millions await a change in national virus policies after social unrest spreads.
The World Health Organization has urged governments to focus on reaching people at risk, such as people over the age of sixty and those with poor health, in order to vaccinate them against Corona.
For her part, Mary Ramsay, director of the Public Health Program at the British Health Security Agency, said: “Although Covid-19 and flu may be a mild infection for many, we must not forget that they can cause serious illness or even death in the most vulnerable members of our societies”.
