2022 “must be the year in which the COVID-19 pandemic ends, but also the beginning of a new era of solidarity,” said the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, today.
When evaluating the second year of the pandemic in what will possibly be his last press conference in 2021, Tedros affirmed that “it was a very hard 12 months for everyone, but we cannot allow it to be a year spoiled”, for which he asked that the global community learn the lessons of a year in which more than 3.5 million people died from COVID-19, even more than in 2020.
“The year 2021 gave us many reasons to have hope, in the form of vaccines that undoubtedly saved many lives, but on the other hand the inequality in the distribution of doses also cost many lives,” he said.
“COVID-19 continues to cause about 50,000 deaths per week and as omicron becomes the dominant variant we have to take extra precautions,” warned the Ethiopian expert.