As 2022 has begun, the fears regarding another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic are intensifying due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the virus. Countries across the globe are imposing stricter restrictions to control the number of cases within their borders.
Amid these fears, World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has made a reassuring statement. He has said that he is positive that the COVID-19 pandemic will most likely end in the year 2022.
The COVID-19 pandemic took over the globe in 2020 and has just entered its third year with a new variant, which is much more transmissible. Reassuring the public, Ghebreyesus said that the pandemic will end in 2022, only “if we end inequality.”
In a statement, the WHO chief said, “While no country is out of the woods from the pandemic, we have many new tools to prevent and treat COVID-19. The longer inequity continues, the higher the risks of this virus evolving in ways we can’t prevent or predict. If we end inequity, we end the pandemic.”
Tedros further added, “As we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m confident that this will be the year we end it – but only if we do it together.” He pointed out that millions of people have missed out on routine vaccination, services for family planning, treatment for communicable and non-communicable diseases during the course of the pandemic.
Ghebreyesus said, “The eradication of polio has never been closer, with just five cases recorded in the two remaining endemic countries. And tobacco use continues to decline. Meanwhile, WHO and our partners responded to crises around the world, including stopping new outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg.”
He further stated that to help prepare the world for future epidemics and pandemics, we established the new WHO BioHub System for countries to share novel biological materials. And we opened the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin, to leverage innovations in data science for public health surveillance and response, WHO chief added.
He reiterated that “we need all countries to work together to reach the global target of vaccinating 70 percent of people in all countries by the middle of 2022.” The world has recently witnessed a new variant of COVID-19, which has been detected in South Africa, as ‘Omicron’. The WHO has classified Omicron as a ‘variant of concern’.
According to the data released by WHO, the Omicron variant has now spread to over 90 countries across the globe and is much more transmissible than the Delta variant, which caused the second wave of the pandemic.
(With ANI inputs)
