The Director General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, argued that if the world wants to end the acute phase of the pandemic in 2022, the problem of inequality between countries must be resolved.
The World Health Organization (WHO ) confirmed today that there is robust evidence that people who have been vaccinated against covid-19 or those who were infected in the past can contract the omicron variant, the spread of which is accelerating day by day around of the world.
In an exclusive press conference for the international press in Geneva, the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that the information that is being analyzed on omicron indicates that this variant circulates more quickly than the previous ones and that “it is those vaccinated and those who have been cured of covid are likely to be infected or reinfected. ”
The person in charge called everyone to become aware of this situation a few days before the end of the year festivities, pointing out that it is better to cancel the celebrations now “and celebrate life tomorrow”, than to “celebrate today and mourn tomorrow. “.
“This is very serious and we are very concerned (about omicron),” Tedros stressed, adding that reports that would indicate that this variant causes more moderate disease than delta (the predominant variant worldwide) may not be representative.
On December 31, it will be two years since the WHO received the first notification of cases of pneumonia of an unknown type detected in China. They turned out to be caused by a new coronavirus, which so far has caused 5.5 million deaths and 272 million cases around the world.
In terms of infections and deaths, the second year of the pandemic was worse than the first. Well, in the last twelve months the deaths rose to 3.3 million. This exceeds the accumulated deaths from malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS globally.
Tedros argued that if the world wants to end the acute phase of the pandemic in 2022, the problem of inequality between countries must be resolved. This in allusion to access to the tools that exist to stop Covid-19, including vaccines, diagnostic tests and treatments.