The World Health Organization (WHO) has decided to maintain the maximum alert level for the covid-19 pandemic, after a meeting of the Emergency Committee for International Health Regulations.
While the committee acknowledged that the pandemic may be approaching a tipping point, it decided that "there is no doubt" that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will continue to be a permanently established pathogen in humans and animals in to the future and therefore long-term public health action is critically needed, announced the WHO in a statement released today.
"While elimination of this virus from human and animals is highly unlikely, mitigating its devastating impact on morbidity and mortality is feasible and should remain a priority objective," stresses the WHO.
The director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says in the statement that he agrees with the Emergency Committee on the covid-19 pandemic, resulting from a meeting held on Friday, in the opinion of continuing to consider this disease as “an emergency of public health, of international interest”.
"Recent rapid risk assessment continues to characterize the overall risk to human health from COVID-19 and its ongoing transmission as high," the statement said.
Tedros Ghebreyesus analyzed the Committee's opinions on the proposed temporary recommendations released in the communiqué, namely maintaining the objective of achieving 100% vaccination coverage against covid-19 in the most vulnerable groups and carrying out booster doses.
Improving the reporting of SARS-CoV-2 surveillance data to WHO, to “detect, assess and monitor emerging variants” and identify significant changes in covid-19 epidemiology, as well as understanding the burden of covid-19 in all regions are also among the recommendations.
WHO should continue to work with Member States to ensure adequate capacity and coverage of covid-19 surveillance, to quickly recognize any significant changes in the virus and/or its epidemiology and the clinical impact, including hospitalisation, so that WHO can trigger an appropriate global alert, if necessary.
Other recommendations are that Member States strengthen access to vaccines, diagnostics and therapies for covid-19, and that they maintain “a strong national response capacity to future events to prevent the occurrence of a cycle of negligence and panic”.
Countries should also consider how to strengthen their ability to respond to outbreaks, including attention to health workforce capacity, infection prevention and control, and funding of respiratory and non-respiratory pathogen treatment.
Other recommended measures are to continue to adjust any international travel-related measures, based on risk assessment, and not to require proof of covid-19 vaccination as a prerequisite for international travel. Also to continue to support vaccine research. that reduce transmission and have wide applicability.
“While the world is in a better position than it was during the peak transmission of the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 a year ago, more than 170,000 COVID-19-related deaths have been reported globally in the past eight weeks.” said WHO.
The WHO states that “surveillance and genetic sequencing have declined globally, making it difficult to track known variants and detect new ones” and warns that health systems are currently in difficulty with covid-19, flu and respiratory syncytial virus, given the shortage of labour in health and the tiredness of professionals.
The Committee was informed that, globally, 13.1 billion doses of vaccines against covid-19 have been administered, with 89% of health professionals and 81% of those over 60 having completed the primary series.
Source Lusa
