The World Health Organization’s director-general announced on Wednesday that the number of coronavirus deaths globally last week was the lowest documented in the pandemic since March 2020, potentially signaling a turning point in the years-long global outbreak.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated at a press conference in Geneva that the world has never been in a better position to combat COVID-19.
“We’re not there yet,” he remarked, equating the effort to that of a marathon runner approaching the finish line. “The worst time to stop running is now,” he added. “Now is the moment to run faster and ensure that we cross the finish line and get the full benefits of our efforts.”
According to WHO’s latest epidemiological report on Covid-19, the number of reported cases fell 28 percent to 3.1 million during the week ending September 11, following a 12-percent-drop a week earlier.
However, the organization has warned that the declining number of reported cases is misleading because many countries have reduced testing and may be missing less dangerous cases.
“We know that the number of instances reported to WHO is an underestimate,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead on Covid, told reporters.
“We feel that far more cases are actually circulating than are being reported to us,” she said, cautioning that the virus “is circulating at a very intense level around the world at the present time”.
Since the start of the pandemic, WHO has tallied more than 605 million cases, and some 6.4 million deaths, although both those numbers are also believed to be serious undercounts.
Based on excess mortality recorded in various countries during the epidemic, a WHO study released in May indicated that up to 17 million people could have died from Covid in 2020 and 2021.
Van Kerkhove predicted that “further waves of infection, maybe at different time points throughout the world, induced by distinct sub-variants of Omicron or even different variants of concern” will occur in the future.
In a bid to help countries to do what is needed to rein in the virus, the WHO on Wednesday published six policy briefs.
Among the recommendations, the WHO is urging countries to invest in vaccinating 100 percent of the most at-risk groups, including health workers and the elderly, and to keep up testing and sequencing for the virus.
“These policy briefs are an urgent call for governments to take a hard look at their policies, and strengthen them for Covid-19 and future pathogens with pandemic potential,” Tedros said.
