AA / Geneva / Peter Kenny
Global public health risks from the COVID-19 virus remain high, but are not evident as the number of deaths has fallen sharply over the past two years, a WHO expert in fighting pandemics said on Friday.
“Public health risks from Covid-19 remain considerable on a global scale. A pathogen is present in every country,” said Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases unit, during a press conference.
He clarified that “data based on cases reported to WHO is not a reliable indicator, and has been for several years now.”
Some data from different countries may indicate that the virus has disappeared. However this is not the case.
WHO data shows that the number of cases reported globally in the past 28 days stands at 286,562, while the number of global deaths in just over two years is more than seven million.
According to Van Kerkhove, the actual spread of the disease is two to nineteen times higher than reported.
“So the virus is circulating. And what’s problematic right now is that the virus continues to mutate,” the WHO official said, two years after the disease emerged, adding: “We have a virus that will continue to circulate and mutate while we allow it to circulate quickly.
However, the number of deaths has decreased significantly since the peak a few years ago, but there are still around 10,000 deaths per month.
“This is only data from 50 countries. Of the 10,000 deaths reported in December, more than half were from the United States of America and 1,000 from Italy,” Van Kerkhove said.
And he added that the WHO does not record deaths in countries around the world because the latter do not report them.
“But this does not mean that patients do not die (…) We recorded an increase of 42% in hospitalizations and 62% in intensive care admissions respectively when comparing December data with November data,” said Van Kerkhove, clarifying that the January data were not taken into consideration.
“With the holiday season and New Year celebrations, we expect these statistics to increase further,” concluded Dr. Van Kerkhove.
*Translated from English by Mourad Belhaj
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2024-01-12 17:36:23
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