WHO warns of more dangerous COVID-19 strains

The threat of a new, more dangerous strain of the Sars-Cov-2 virus that current vaccines cannot combat is completely real, according to World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

He said WHO is concerned about the trend of increasing deaths in some regions, such as Africa and the Western Pacific. It is too early to say that the pandemic is over, and it is difficult to predict how the virus will continue to progress.

On June 3, the World Health Organization received a report of a total of 528,816,317 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection since the beginning of the pandemic and 6,294,969 deaths. Within 24 hours, the number of cases increased by 486,278 people, the number of deaths increased by 1,380 people.

Earlier, at the opening session of the World Health Assembly (the WHO decision-making body includes representatives of 194 countries) – Mr. Tedros also gave a message that “COVID-19 is definitely not over.”

“So, COVID-19 finished yet? No, it’s definitely not over. I know that’s not the message you want to hear and that’s certainly not the message I want to convey.”he said.

The WHO leader added that although in many countries all restrictions are lifted and life seems to be returning to pre-pandemic, the number of reported cases is increasing in nearly 70 countries.

Mr. Tedros agreed that the process of “covering” the vaccine in the world has made certain progress, with 60% of the world’s population being vaccinated. But there are still nearly a billion people in low-income countries who are still unvaccinated.

Besides, only 57 countries have vaccination rates for the entire population of 70% or more – and most are high-income countries.

The head of WHO warned that as the number of transmissions increased, there were more deaths and there was a risk of new variants emerging, the reduction in testing and genetic sequencing of cases could make it worse. gender “blind to the evolution of the virus”.

He also pointed out that some countries are still not committed enough in the implementation of vaccination and there are still gaps in operational and financial capacity. Besides, misinformation still makes many people hesitate to get vaccinated.