. WHO warns COVID-19 remains international health threat
UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, yesterday, said the only way out of the COVID-19 pandemic and out of unjust distribution of vaccines is through a global vaccination plan.
This is even as the World Health Organisation (WHO), on Monday, warned that COVID-19 remains a global health threat and not yet the time to declare the pandemic over.
Mr Guterres spoke to a meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Group of 77 developing nations (G77) and China on Tuesday at United Nations headquarters in New York.
According to him, the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on developed and developing countries alike, adding that the UN backed the vaccination strategy set out by the WHO.
The goal of the vaccination strategy is to get vaccines into the arms of 40% of people in all countries by the end of 2021 and 70% by the middle of 2022.
“Everyone, everywhere, must have access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatment,” he said, asking for support for the ACT-accelerator and the COVAX facility.
Mr Guterres also warned that the world economy was projected to grow by 5.9% in 2021, but the pace of recovery, according to him, is extremely uneven.
For him, this is not surprising, when developed economies are investing 28% of their Gross Domestic Product in recovery, middle-income countries are investing 6.5%, and the least developed nations are investing just 1.8%.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that cumulative economic growth per capita over the next five years will be 75% less than the rest of the world.
“This dangerous divergence threatens to widen as growth rates are expected to decrease in 2022. Rising inflation could also have a negative impact on the cost of borrowing and servicing debt,” he warned.
Mr Guterres also addressed the climate crisis, unsustainable levels of inequality, and the development of new technologies, asking for “a quantum leap in unity and solidarity to make collective decisions” on these global challenges.
On multilateralism and the importance of the UN, the Secretary-General stressed the role of the organisation during the pandemic, as the Country Teams rolled out socio-economic response plans covering 139 countries and territories.
More than $3 billion was repurposed, and an additional $2 billion was mobilised to prioritise immediate support.
For Mr Guterres, it was recent reforms that enabled the organisation to adjust and respond quickly.
“As a result, more than 90 per cent of host governments have indicated that the United Nations today is more relevant to their country’s development needs when compared to three years ago,” he said.
Everyone, everywhere, must have access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatment.
International health threat
WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, said this in a statement on Monday that the pandemic remains a threat while commenting on the outcome of the COVID Emergency Committee meeting held on Friday.
“There is little doubt that this virus will remain a permanently established pathogen in humans and animals for the foreseeable future,” the committee said.
“It is three years since COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency of international concern. The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was first reported in Wuhan, China, on December 31, 2019.”
The WHO chief noted that although the world was in a better position than a year ago when Omicron infections surged, more than 170,000 COVID-19-related deaths had been reported globally in the last eight weeks.
Mr Ghebreyesus noted again that surveillance and genetic sequencing of the coronavirus had declined globally, making it more difficult to track known variants and detect new mutations.
He warned that health systems struggled to treat many COVID-19 patients and others with influenza and respiratory infections amid staff shortages and health worker burnout.
He also insisted that vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics remained critical in preventing severe disease, saving lives and taking the pressure off health systems and health workers globally.
Despite their proven worth, he said the COVID-19 response remained “hobbled” in too many countries that cannot provide these tools to the populations most in need, older people and health workers.
Globally, more than 752.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 6.8 million deaths, were reported to WHO’s coronavirus dashboard.
At the WHO meeting of the Emergency COVID Committee, participants heard that globally, 13.1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have now been administered, with 89% of health workers and 81% of older adults (over 60) completing the primary series.
Committee members expressed concerns about insufficient vaccine uptake in low and middle-income countries, as well as in the highest-risk groups globally, and the uncertainty associated with emerging variants.
They also recognised that “pandemic fatigue” and the impression of reduced risk “have led to drastically reduced use of public health and social measures, such as masks and social distancing.”
Countries were urged to remain vigilant and continue reporting surveillance and genomic sequencing data to WHO.
“Appropriately targeted” public health and social measures should also be implemented where necessary, and the most vulnerable communities should be vaccinated to minimise severe disease and deaths,” the meeting said.
The Emergency Committee explained that although the Omicron variants circulating globally remained highly transmissible, infection no longer necessarily means that severe disease will follow, compared to earlier coronavirus variants of concern. (NAN)
