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WHO urges international locations to maintain up their efforts to struggle the illness, with lowest degree of recorded instances since March 2020.
The variety of newly reported instances of COVID-19 has dropped dramatically, the top of the World Well being Group has mentioned, urging nations to maintain up their efforts in opposition to the illness that has killed greater than six million folks.
“We’ve by no means been in a greater place to finish the pandemic,” WHO Director-Basic Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus advised reporters at a digital information convention on Wednesday.
“We aren’t there but, however the finish is in sight.”
Newly reported instances of the illness, which has killed hundreds of thousands and contaminated 606 million since showing in late 2019, final week fell to the bottom degree since March 2020, Tedros mentioned.
“If we don’t take this chance now, we run the danger of extra variants, extra deaths, extra disruption, and extra uncertainty.”
In a bid to assist international locations to do what is required to rein within the virus, the WHO printed six coverage briefs.
“These coverage briefs are an pressing name for governments to take a tough have a look at their insurance policies, and strengthen them for COVID-19 and future pathogens with pandemic potential,” Tedros mentioned.
He additionally urged nations to vaccinate one hundred pc of their high-risk teams and hold testing for the virus.
The rollout of vaccines and therapies has helped to stem the severity of the illness.
The WHO warned of the opportunity of future waves of the virus and mentioned international locations want to keep up enough provides of medical tools and healthcare staff.
“We anticipate there to be future waves of infections, doubtlessly at completely different time factors all through the world attributable to completely different subvariants of Omicron and even completely different variants of concern,” mentioned WHO’s senior epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove.
Monkeypox instances, too, had been on a downtrend however Tedros urged international locations to maintain up the struggle.
WHO officers mentioned final month that it’s attainable to get rid of the monkeypox outbreak in Europe by stepping up vaccination and testing.
“As with COVID-19, this isn’t the time to calm down or let down our guard.”
Final week, the UN Improvement Programme (UNDP) mentioned that, for the primary time in its historical past, the Human Improvement Index (HDI) has declined for 2 straight years amid crises comparable to COVID-19 and the warfare in Ukraine. The HDI is a measure of nations’ life expectations, schooling ranges and requirements of dwelling.
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