Deaths linked to Covid 19 have fallen by 95% since January, the WHO has announced.
- There have been 95% fewer deaths from Covid-19 since January, the WHO said.
- Even if the state of health emergency seems to be moving away, the virus is still circulating.
- New variants and symptoms of Covid long should be subject to special surveillance, according to the WHO.
Are we approaching the end of the global health emergency linked to Covid-19? The World Health Organization (WHO) seems confident.
Covid-19: the virus causes far fewer deaths
Indeed, according to his last statement, the number of Covid deaths has dropped drastically since the start of the year, by 95%. According to the WHO, which will meet next May to assess the status of the pandemic, this encouraging figure should not make us forget that the virus is still circulating and that it will not disappear any time soon.
“Several countries are seeing a resurgence and in the past four weeks 14,000 people have died from the disease“, lamented its general manager, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
It is above all the consequences of the infection that concern the WHO. Indeed, today one in ten contamination results in a long Covid, which means that hundreds of millions of people could require long-term care. This is why the WHO encourages countries around the world to learn how to manage the complications of Covid-19 outside of emergency situations.
Covid-19: new variants of Covid could relaunch the epidemic
Furthermore, as shown by the emergence of the XBB.1.16 variant, “the virus continues to mutate and is still capable of causing new waves of infections and deaths“, said Maria Van Kerkhove, who leads the fight against Covid at the WHO.
This XBB variant and its sub-variants are also now globally dominant and they are able to hijack current immune protections, which means that vaccinated or already infected people could contract the disease again.
The WHO specialist thus pleaded for increased surveillance of the virus, in particular through screening. Understanding its different mutations could indeed make it possible to refine the composition of vaccines and decide on the actions to be taken.