The World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said the number of COVID-19 deaths had dropped by 95 percent since the start of the year, reported the UN News.
“We’re very encouraged by the sustained decline in reported deaths from Covid-19, which have dropped 95 percent since the beginning of this year,” the WHO chief said at a press conference in Geneva.
Tedros cautioned that some countries are reporting an increase in COVID-19 cases and that 14,000 people have lost their lives to the deadly virus over the past four weeks.
He said it is estimated that one in 10 infections now results in what’s commonly known as “long COVID”, suggesting that hundreds of millions of people will need longer-term care. He added that the emergence of the new XBB.1.16 variant proves that the virus is still mutating and has the capacity to result in a new wave of infection and death.
Tedros said that the COVID-19 virus will stay for long, and asked countries to learn ways to manage it. He said the WHO is still hopeful that it would declare an end to Covid-19 as a public health emergency of international concern when its advisory committee meets next month.
He said after a decade of stalled progress, the global rate of vaccination is now the same as they were in 2008. He appealed to all countries to address the barriers to immunization, whether it’s access, availability, cost, or disinformation.
On Wednesday, the WHO also launched a new initiative to help strengthen countries’ ability to plan for and deal with, another deadly pandemic like COVID-19.
The new Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats Initiative, or PRET provides a joined-up approach for responding to the threat or arrival of any respiratory pathogen such as flu or the range of coronaviruses that have the ability to rapidly mutate into different variants.
