Is the Covid-19 pandemic still devastating enough to require a maximum level of alert? This is the question by the World Health Organization (WHO), and that the emergency committee will have to decide.
For the boss of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the answer does not seem to be in doubt. “Although I do not want to preempt the opinion of the emergency committee, I remain very concerned regarding the situation in many countries and the growing number of deaths,” he said on Tuesday, during a regular press briefing. in Geneva.
“My message is clear. Do not underestimate this virus, ”insisted the director general, who can choose whether or not to follow the advice of the Emergency Committee. The 14th meeting of this committee takes place almost three years to the day since it first recommended declaring Covid-19, a public health emergency of international concern, the highest level of alert in the world. WHO.
Too few people properly vaccinated
Since then, this panel of experts meets every three months to discuss the pandemic and then reports to Dr. Tedros, in the form of recommendations. In his opening remarks at the opening of the meeting on Friday, he pointed out that “since the beginning of December, the number of weekly deaths reported around the world has been increasing”.
“In addition, the lifting of restrictions in China has led to an increase in the number of deaths in the most populous country in the world” and last week, out of nearly 40,000 deaths from Covid reported to the WHO, “more than half were reported from China”.
The disease has claimed 170,000 lives in the past two months. Dr Tedros regretted that too few people are being properly vaccinated and that surveillance and genetic sequencing, which track the evolution of the virus and its movements, have dropped sharply.