Geneva, Jan. 24 (BNA): The head of the World Health Organization warns that conditions are still ideal for more variants of the Corona virus to emerge, and says it is dangerous to assume that Omicron is the last or that we are “at the end of the game”, while saying that the acute phase of the epidemic It may end this year – if some key goals are achieved.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on Monday laid out a range of global health achievements and concerns on issues such as reducing tobacco use, combating resistance to antimicrobial treatments, and the risks of climate change to human health.
But, he said, “ending the acute phase of the epidemic must remain our collective priority.”
There are different scenarios for how the epidemic would spread and how the acute phase could end.
“But it is dangerous to assume that Omicron will be the last alternative or that we are at the end of the game,” Tedros said at the start of this week’s WHO Executive Board meeting.
“On the contrary, globally, conditions are ideal for more variables to emerge.”
But he insisted, “we can end COVID-19 as a global health emergency, and we can do it this year,” by reaching goals such as the World Health Organization’s goal of vaccinating 70 percent of every country’s population by the middle of this year, using a focus on the most vulnerable risk of COVID-19 infection, and improve testing and sequencing rates to more closely track the virus and its emerging variants.
“It is true that we will be living with COVID for the foreseeable future, and we will need to learn how to manage it through a sustainable and integrated acute respiratory illness system” to help prepare for future pandemics, he said.
“But learning to live with COVID does not mean that we give this virus a free ride. It cannot mean that we accept approximately 50,000 deaths a week from a preventable and treatable disease.”
In stark terms, Tedros also called for a strengthened WHO and increased funding for it to help avert health crises, according to the Associated Press.
“Let me make this clear: If the current funding model continues, WHO is set to fail.
The paradigm shift in global health that is needed now must be matched by a paradigm shift in WHO funding.”
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