The covid-19 pandemic is not over, WHO warns

AP, Reuters and Europe Press

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, May 23, 2022, p. 16

Berlin. The covid-19 pandemic certainly not overwarned the director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during the opening of the body’s 75th General Health Assembly, despite the drop in cases compared to those during the wave promoted for the omicron variant.

Adhanom Ghebreyesus told officials gathered in Geneva that declining testing and sequencing means we are blinding ourselves to the evolution of the virus. He also pointed out that nearly a billion people in low-income countries have yet to be vaccinated.

This virus has surprised us at every step, it has been a storm that has hit communities again and again, and we still cannot predict its trajectory or its intensity.he underlined.

Although progress has been made, with 60 percent of the world’s population vaccinated, it’s not over anywhere until it’s over everywherehe declared.

Reported cases are rising in nearly 70 countries across all regions, and this in a world where testing rates have plummeted.he added.

Reported deaths are rising in Africa, the continent with the lowest vaccination coverage, he said, and only 57 nations — almost all of them wealthy — have vaccinated 70 percent of their populations.

Although the supply of immunologicals in the world has improved, in some countries there is a insufficient political commitment to deploy the vaccinesand in others there are gaps in the operational or financial capacityhe explained.

In all of them, we see that hesitancy about immunizations is driven by misinformation. The pandemic will not magically disappear, but we can end it.

Shanghai reopened a small part of the world’s longest subway network after a nearly two-month closure of some lines, as the city prepared to lift the lockdown more decisively next week.

The authorities of the Chinese city will return to the system of restrictions by neighborhoods, so that the strictest confinements are again limited to those areas with a greater number of cases and are not indiscriminate measures.

The pandemic has been settled so far with 525 million 539 thousand 6 people infected and 6 million 277 thousand 72 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.