The number of new cases of COVID-19 infection at the global level has stopped growing. The WHO says the world has reached a plateau in the coronavirus incidence. UN News reports.
«We are currently observing a plateau in COVID-19 cases and deaths globally. However, this is an unacceptably high plateau: over 5.4 million cases and nearly 90,000 deaths were reported last week,» the WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing in Geneva.
According to him, the morbidity and mortality decline is now observed in Europe and the North and South America, which were previously particularly affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
«Over the past year, many countries have experienced a declining trend in cases and deaths, have relaxed public health and social measures too quickly, and individuals have let down their guard, only for those hard-won gains to be lost,» the WHO head warned.
This is exactly what happened in India, where 350,000-370,000 people are infected every day. Tedros Ghebreyesus announced a new WHO «Together for India» initiative, under which the organization will raise funds to support the fight against the pandemic in that country. The money will be spent, in particular, on the purchase of oxygen, personal protective equipment and medicines.
While vaccines are reducing severe disease and death in countries fortunate enough to have them in sufficient quantities, the «shocking» global disparity in access remains «one of the biggest risks to ending the pandemic», underscored the WHO chief.
Despite early results suggesting that vaccines might also drive down transmission, he explained that while high and upper-middle income countries represent 53 percent of the world’s population, they have received 83 percent of its vaccines.
And by contrast, low and lower-middle income countries, which account for 47 per cent of the global population, have received just 17 percent of the shots supplied by manufacturers so far.
The head of WHO stressed once again: it will not be possible to defeat the pandemic until the majority of the world’s inhabitants get the vaccine.
