Global Covid cases fall, WHO says ‘End of Covid in sight’

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared on Wednesday that the world has never been in a better position to put an end to the misery as the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) approaches the end of its third year. In this regard, he urged nations to keep up their fight against the virus, which has so far claimed the lives of more than six million people.

We have not arrived yet. But the end is in sight,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, told reporters during a virtual press conference.

Since the pandemic started in China in late 2019, the director of the United Nations’ health agency’s comments can be considered the most upbeat. After disclosing that the number of new cases reported globally dropped to its lowest level last week since March 2020, Ghebreyesus made the remark.

The WHO director warned at the briefing that if we don’t seize this chance now, there could be more variants, more fatalities, more disruption, and more uncertainty.

According to the WHO’s most recent epidemiological data on Covid-19, the number of cases reported fell by 28% to 3.1 million for the week ending September 11 after falling by 12% the week before, according to media.

The UN agency emphasised that the widespread use of vaccines and treatments has significantly lessened the severity of the sickness.

The WHO advised against ignoring the situation despite the encouraging indicators. It was stated that the declining number of cases might be misleading because some countries have reduced testing and might not be catching the less severe cases.

According to Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO technical lead on Covid, “we suspect that considerably more cases are actually circulating than are being reported to us.” She further cautioned that the virus “is circulating at a very intense level over the world at the present time.”

In the future, Van Kerkhove warned, “other sub-variants of Omicron or even different variants of concern” may give rise to “new waves of infection, maybe at different temporal points throughout the planet.”

However, she went on to say that subsequent rounds of infection “do not necessarily translate into subsequent waves of death.”

The UN health agency emphasised immunisation and advised nations to make investments in providing 100% vaccinations to their most vulnerable populations, particularly the elderly and healthcare workers, and to keep a close eye on their virus testing and sequencing.