GENEVA (Reuters) – Confusion and complacency in addressing COVID-19 means the pandemic is far from over, but it can be controlled for months with proven public health measures, the director-general said on Monday of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
To date, some 780 million vaccines have been administered worldwide, but measures such as wearing masks and maintaining physical distance must be applied to reverse the trajectory.
“We also want to see societies and economies reopen and resume travel and trade,” Tedros said in a briefing.
“But right now, intensive care units in many countries are overflowing and people are dying, and it’s totally avoidable.”
“The COVID19 pandemic is far from over. But we have many reasons for optimism. The decline in cases and deaths during the first two months of the year shows that this virus and its variants can be stopped, “he added.
The transmission was motivated by “confusion, complacency and inconsistency in public health measures.”
India has overtaken Brazil to become the country with the second largest number of infections in the world after the United States, as it fights a second massive wave, having given about 105 million doses of vaccine among a population of 1.4 billion.
“We are now at a critical point in the pandemic, the trajectory of this pandemic is growing for the seventh consecutive week,” said Maria van Kerkhove, WHO team leader at COVID-19.
He noted that there had been a 9% increase in cases last week, the seventh consecutive week of increases and a 5% increase in deaths, adding: “If we look at the epi curve (epidemic) and the trajectory from the right of the pandemic is now growing exponentially ”.
Tedros said that in some countries, despite the continuous transmission, restaurants and nightclubs were full and markets open and crowded with few people taking precautions.
“Some people seem to take the approach that if they are relatively young, it doesn’t matter if they have COVID-19,” he said.
Reports by Silke Koltrowitz and Stephanie Nebehay, edited by William Maclean