Planet can end Covid emergency this year, says head of WHO

The WHO has called on all countries to get at least 70 per cent of their respective populations vaccinated in a bid to try and achieve this aim

The World Health Organisation claims that the global Covid-19 emergency could end this year in final call on governments around the world to ramp up vaccination efforts.

Speaking on Monday, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the UN health agency’s executive board that although someone still dies from the virus every 12 seconds, the end could finally be in sight.

“We can end Covid-19 as a global health emergency and we can do it this year,” he stated.

The WHO has been pressuring G20 governments to accelerate vaccine distribution efforts in poorer nations. Doing this, they add, would help with their aim of getting 70 per cent of all populations vaccinated by the middle of 2022.

As Dr Tedros states, a staggering 85 per cent of people in Africa are yet to receive a single jab, while half of the WHO’s 194 member states missed the organisation’s previous vaccine target of 40 per cent.

“We simply cannot end the emergency phase of the pandemic unless we bridge this gap,” he added.

“On average last week, 100 cases were reported every three seconds, and somebody lost their life to Covid-19 every 12 seconds,” he added.

In spite of the largely encouraging rhetoric, the WHO chief also claimed that the world would need to learn to live with Covid.

“We will need to learn to manage it through a sustained and integrated strategy for acute respiratory diseases,” he said, emphasising it was “dangerous to assume that Omicron will be the last variant, or that this is the end game.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “Globally the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge. The potential for a more transmissible, more deadly variant remains very real.”

The most recent variant to sweep the globe, Omicron, has at least proven to be milder than many experts were anticipating in terms of symptoms. Crucially, this means the death rate isn't soaring to 2020 levels amid record infection numbers.