WHO Director-General: COVID-19 is not over

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told global health ministers that while novel Coronavirus has reported a significant drop in confirmed cases and deaths, now is not the time to lower our guard.

Is COVID-19 over? No, it’s not over, that’s for sure.

While in many countries all restrictions have been lifted and life looks much the same as before the pandemic, cases are being reported in nearly 70 countries while testing rates are falling sharply. At the same time, the number of reported deaths is also rising in Africa, which has the lowest vaccination coverage.

Tedros said progress had been made with 60 percent of the world’s population already vaccinated, but cautioned that nearly 1 billion people in low-income countries remained unvaccinated.

It is possible that the outbreak will end。

Noting that who’s main focus now is to support countries to get vaccinated as soon as possible, Tedros called on countries to work together to reach 70% vaccination coverage and aim for 100% coverage for people over 60 years of age, 100% coverage for health workers and 100% coverage for people with underlying diseases.