Reuters, Europa Press, Ap, Afp and Xinhua
Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, March 17, 2022, p. 16
Geneva. The global rise in covid-19 cases could be just the tip of the iceberg
Given the reduction in screening rates in several countries, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the World Health Organization (WHO), warned yesterday.
Increases are to be expected, especially in areas where transmission prevention measures have been lifted. However, mortality levels are unacceptably high in many countries
commented Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
In the last seven days, more than 11 million new cases were detected, an increase of 8 percent, and 43 thousand deaths, with a reduction of 17 percent, according to the WHO report on Tuesday.
The largest increase in infections occurred in the Western Pacific and Africa, where they rose 29 and 12 percent, respectively. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO technical lead for the pandemic, explained that a combination of factors was causing the cases, including the omicron variant.
The agency stressed in its weekly report that the figures should be interpreted with caution
as several countries are changing their mitigation strategies as they exit the acute phase of the pandemic, thus testing less, leaving many new cases undetected.
Countries including Sweden and Britain have announced plans to abandon widespread testing, saying the huge investment is no longer worth it.
Health workers in Hong Kong began storing the bodies of those killed by covid-19 in refrigerated containers due to a lack of space in morgues due to a sharp increase in infections attributed to omicron. South Korea and Austria reported record infections in their daily epidemiological counts after detecting 400,000 and 58,583, respectively.
The World Trade Organization celebrated that the European Union, the United States, India and South Africa have reached a compromise on the repeal of intellectual property rights that concern trade for the production of vaccines.
