WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of the gatherings during the upcoming holiday season, warning that they could lead to “more cases, overwhelmed health systems and more deaths,” according to covid-19.
“We all want to get back to normal life. The quickest way to do this is for leaders and individuals to make the tough decisions that need to be made to protect themselves and others. In some cases, this will mean the cancellation or postponement of events “– explained Gebreyesus at a press conference on Monday.
“A canceled event is better than a canceled life. Better to cancel now and celebrate later than celebrate now and regret later, ”he urged.
Adhanom explained that there is now evidence that this new strain is “spreading significantly faster” than the previous dominant strain, Delta, and is causing infections in people who have already been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19.
“It is more likely that people vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 could be infected or re-infected,” Tedros said.
Therefore, WHO considers it “unreasonable” to conclude that Omicron is a “softer” option. “It is unreasonable to think that this is an easy option that will not cause serious illness, because with the increase in the number of diseases, all health systems will be under pressure,” said Sumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at WHO. However, the WHO gave some hope given that the pandemic, which has already killed more than 5.6 million people worldwide, could end in 2022 if 70 percent of the world’s population were vaccinated by the middle of next year.
“We hope this disease will be a relatively mild disease that is easy to prevent and easy to treat,” said Mike Ryan, WHO’s chief emergency care specialist. “If we can reduce the transmission of the virus to a minimum, we can end the pandemic, ”he said.
However, Tedros also said China – the country where the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first discovered – should provide more data related to the origin of covid-19 to help guide future pandemic policy.
“We need to continue until we know the origins, we need to work harder because we need to learn from what has happened in order to achieve more in the future,” said the WHO Director-General.
“2022 should be the year of the end of the pandemic,” he concluded.
