New York: The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is “nowhere near over” as the number of new cases worldwide has risen by 30 percent in the last two weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
“I am concerned that cases of Covid-19 continue to rise — putting further pressure on stretched health systems and health workers. I am also concerned about the increasing trend of deaths,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists in Geneva, reports Xinhua news agency.
According to Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, the recent increase in the number of newly reported Covid-19 cases has been largely driven by Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, and by the lifting of public health and social measures.
“New waves of the virus demonstrate again that Covid-19 is nowhere near over, and the virus is running freely and countries are not effectively managing the disease burden based on their capacity,” Tedros said.
He urged governments to deploy tried and tested measures like masking, improved ventilation, and test and treat protocols, while regularly reviewing and adjusting Covid-19 response plans based on the current epidemiology and also the potential for new variants to appear.
