The World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Tuesday urged the countries to conduct proper Covid-19 testing and surveillance, saying that the world is blind to how the virus is spreading because of falling testing rates, reported The Mint.
During a press conference at the UN agency’s headquarters in Geneva, Mr. Ghebreyesus said the WHO is receiving less & less information about transmission and sequencing as many countries have reduced testing.
“This makes us increasingly blind to patterns of transmission and evolution,” he added.
The director-general alerted for the consequences of the drop in testing which could compromise efforts at following the evolution of the virus.
Meanwhile, the WHO’s emergency committee on Covid-19 has unanimously affirmed that the virus remains a major public health danger and insisted that countries must stop dropping their guard.
With many nations relaxing public health and social measures, and drastically reducing testing for the virus, the WHO’s group of experts said the pandemic was far from being at an end. The experts said that the situation is far from over with regard to the Covid-19 pandemic, the circulation of the virus is still very active, mortality remains high and the virus is evolving in an unpredictable way.
The emergency committee concluded that the pandemic still constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) — the highest level of alert that the global health agency can sound. The committee meets every three months to discuss the pandemic and reports to the WHO chief.
During the Geneva conference, Mr. Ghebreyesus announced the lowest global Covid-19 death toll since March 2020. As per the latest data, there were just over 15,000 deaths reported last week.
According to a recent study published in the medical journal “The Lancet”, the pandemic caused more than 18 million deaths, more than three times the official estimate.
