The World Health Organization warned, on Tuesday, that the significant decline in the number of Covid tests being conducted has left the world in a state of blindness to the continuing development of the virus and its potentially dangerous mutations.
The United Nations agency said that reported injuries and deaths also recorded a significant decline.
“Last week, more than 15,000 deaths were reported to the World Health Organization, which is the lowest weekly total number recorded since March 2020,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
While Ghebreyesus welcomed this new trend in the virus’ trajectory, he cautioned that the lower numbers may also be a result of the significant decline in the number of tests being conducted to detect infections.
He added, “This blinds us even more to the patterns of transmission and evolution of the virus,” commenting, “When it comes to a deadly virus, ignorance is not a blessing.”
William Rodriguez, who heads the Global Diagnostic Alliance “Find”, also expressed his anger that in recent months many governments simply stopped conducting HIV tests.
Speaking during his participation in the press conference hosted by the World Health Organization, Rodriguez noted that in the past four months, amid the rise in Omicron infections, “test rates have decreased from 70 to 90 percent worldwide.”
The irony is that the decline in the number of tests came at a time when the possibility of reaching accurate results regarding the infection became more than ever.
“We now have unprecedented capabilities to find out what’s going on,” Rodriguez noted.
“However, since today’s testing was the first casualty of a global decision to let our guard down, we have gone blind and oblivious to what is happening with this virus,” he added.
The Covid epidemic, according to official figures, has killed more than six million people since it first appeared in China in late 2019, but the real number is believed to be at least three times more.
While many countries are canceling preventive measures and trying to return to a semblance of normality, the World Health Organization stresses that the epidemic is not over yet.
“This virus will not disappear just because countries will stop looking for it,” Tedros said, noting that “it is still spreading and still mutating and killing.”
He warned that “the emergence of a dangerous new mutant still poses a real threat,” adding that “despite the decrease in the number of deaths, we still do not understand the long-term consequences of infection for survivors.”
