Covid-19 Has Not Yet Become Endemic, WHO Warns

The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Wednesday that last week saw the most cases of COVID-19 reported from around the globe in a single week.

Speaking at a televised news conference in Switzerland, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO had received reports of "more than 15 million new cases of COVID-19" during the week.

While the WHO Director-General acknowledged that the amount of weekly deaths had remained "stable since October last year," he did caution that the rise of people being hospitalized was increasing but hadn't reached the level of previous waves of coronavirus.

His message was clear that global vaccination was the way forward to finding an end to the pandemic.

"We must not allow this virus a free ride or wave the white flag, especially when so many people around the world remain unvaccinated. In Africa, more than 85 percent of people are yet to receive a single dose of vaccine. We cannot end the acute phase of the pandemic unless we close this gap."

Ghebreyesus also stated that repeated booster doses of vaccinations had been shown to be unsustainable in combating the virus according to research from TAG-CO-VAC, the technical advisory group on COVID-19 vaccine composition.

Ghebreyesus laid out clearly his beliefs that the transmission of the virus by unvaccinated people could lead to a potentially worse scenario in the future.

"While vaccines remain very effective at preventing severe diseases and death. They do not fully prevent transmission. More transmission means more hospitalizations, more deaths, more people off work, including teachers and health workers, and more risk of another variant emerging that's even more transmissible and more deadly than omicron," he said.

The omicron variant spreads even more easily than other coronavirus strains, and has already become dominant in many countries.

It also more easily infects those who have been vaccinated or had previously been infected by prior versions of the virus.

However, early studies show omicron is less likely to cause severe illness than the previous delta variant, and vaccination and a booster still offer strong protection from serious illness, hospitalization and death.

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