The World Health Organization (WHO) admitted this Friday that it had reduced the maximum alert level in force for Covid-19 this year, alleging that the impact of the disease could soon be equal to that of seasonal flu.
“I think we are getting to the point where we can look at covid-19 in the same way that we look at the seasonal flu, which is a health threat, a virus that will continue to kill but does not affect society or systems. . hospitals,” WHO’s head of emergency programs Michael Ryan told a news conference.
The director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed himself “very pleased to see that, for the first time, the weekly number of deaths reported in the last four weeks was lower” than when the pandemic was decreed about three years ago.
“Certainly we are in a much better position today than at any other time during the pandemic,” said the head of the organization, who was still “sure” that the WHO will be able to lower its maximum alert level “this year” to the Covid-19.
The WHO advanced with the level of international public health emergency on January 30, 2020, when the world had fewer than 100 cases of contagion and no deaths outside of China, but it was not until March of the same year that the pandemic situation was declared.
“We declared a global health emergency to urge countries to take decisive action, but not all have done so,” acknowledged Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noting that, three years later, the death toll from the coronavirus exceeds almost seven million. . officially registered in the world.
At the end of January, the director general of the WHO decided to maintain the maximum level of alert for Covid-19, after another meeting of its emergency committee, a body that has met periodically to assess the situation of the pandemic, but experts recognized that a “tipping point” was approaching.
According to the most recent data from the organization, released this Thursday, since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 760 million cases and nearly 6.8 million deaths caused by Covid-19 have been registered worldwide.
Between February 13 and March 12, almost 4.1 million new infections and 28,000 deaths were reported, a decrease of 40% and 57%, respectively, compared to the previous 28 days globally.
In Europe, the WHO advances that more than 1.5 million new cases were registered, an increase of 20% compared to the previous 28 days, but the number of deaths decreased by 26% to 9,274 reported deaths.
The WHO acknowledges, however, that data on infections and reinfections are underestimated, due in part to reduced testing and reporting delays in many countries.
Covid-19 is an infectious respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, a type of virus that was detected three years ago in China and has spread rapidly throughout the world, assuming several variants and subvariants, some more contagious than others. others.
Source: TSF
