The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that the COVID-19 pandemic remains a global health emergency.
Despite the progress made in vaccination efforts and the improvement in the situation compared to a year ago, at least 170,000 people have died worldwide in the past eight weeks due to the virus.
WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for at-risk groups to be fully vaccinated, an increase in testing, early use of antivirals, an expansion of lab networks, and a fight against misinformation about the pandemic.
According to the findings of the emergency committee on the pandemic, over 13.1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered so far, with nearly 90% of health workers and over four in five people over 60 years of age having completed the first series of vaccinations.
The committee acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic may be approaching an inflection point, with higher levels of immunity through vaccination or infection limiting the impact of the virus on morbidity and mortality.
However, the WHO warns that the SARS-CoV-2 virus will remain a permanently established pathogen in humans and animals for the foreseeable future.
While Omicron variants are easily spread, there has been a decoupling between infection and severe disease compared to earlier variants.
The declaration of a global emergency by the WHO sparked international cooperation and allowed the organization to make temporary recommendations to its member countries to prevent or deal with the threat.
Despite the progress made, the WHO stresses that the pandemic remains a serious global health risk and the fight against COVID-19 continues.
