The World Health Organization warned, on Wednesday, of “worrying trends” in COVID-19 disease ahead of winter in the northern hemisphere, calling for increased vaccination and surveillance.
With data limited after many countries stopped reporting COVID data, the United Nations Health Organization has estimated that hundreds of thousands of people around the world are currently in hospital with the virus.
“We continue to see worrying trends for COVID-19 ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter season,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an online press conference. “Deaths are increasing in some parts of the Middle East and Asia, and admissions to intensive care units are increasing in countries.” Europe, and hospital admissions are increasing in several regions.
He explained that only 43 countries, which is less than a quarter of the 194 member states of the World Health Organization, report deaths due to Covid to the organization, and only 20 countries send information about cases that require hospitalization.
“We estimate that there are hundreds of thousands of people in hospital right now because of COVID,” said Maria Van-Kerkhove, WHO Technical Director for COVID-19. (…) This is a concern given that when we get into the colder months, In some countries, people tend to spend more time indoors together, and that will be a window of opportunity for airborne viruses like COVID.”
With influenza and respiratory syncytial virus also circulating, Van-Kerkhove stressed the importance of getting tested as well as getting vaccinated.
For his part, Tedros said that although there is currently no single dominant variant of the Corona virus worldwide, the sub-mutant of Omicron EG.5 is increasing in prevalence.
He added that small numbers of the highly mutated BA.2.86 sub-mutant had now been detected in 11 countries and that the World Health Organization was “monitoring this variant closely to assess its transmissibility and potential impact”.
According to Van-Kerkhov, preliminary data indicates that current vaccines will provide protection against the BA.2.86 mutant.
Tedros said one of the WHO’s biggest concerns is how few people at risk have recently received a Covid vaccine, urging those in poor health not to delay getting a booster shot.
“The increase in hospitalizations and deaths shows that COVID-19 is here to stay, and that we will still need tools to fight it,” he said.
And last week, the World Health Organization announced that a global COVID knowledge-sharing platform called C-TAP had secured three new licensing agreements for the transfer of vaccine technologies.
2023-09-06 15:21:00
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