The World Health Organization cautioned that the virus was still spreading on Wednesday even though Covid-19 mortality had decreased by 95% since the year’s beginning.
Covid-19, according to the global health authority, is a permanent condition, and nations will need to learn how to handle its ongoing non-emergency impacts, including post-Covid-19 conditions, or Long Covid.
According to Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead for Covid-19 at the WHO, XBB sub-lineages are now predominant globally.
People can become reinfected despite having received a vaccination or having already been infected because they have an increased growth advantage and are exhibiting immune escape.
She demanded additional testing and surveillance so they could track the virus and determine what each of these changes meant.
According to her, this information may help determine the vaccine’s ingredients and guide decisions about how to treat the virus.
Although the committee that advises him on the status is scheduled to meet next month for its usual quarterly meeting, Tedros reaffirmed that the WHO was still hopeful of declaring an end to Covid-19 as a public health emergency of worldwide significance.
He continued by saying that because this virus is persistent, all nations would need to learn how to control it in addition to other contagious diseases.
In the meanwhile, Tedros claimed that one in ten infections were thought to result in Long Covid, indicating that hundreds of millions of individuals would require longer-term care.
The head of the WHO also mentioned how the Covid-19 pandemic interfered with vaccination campaigns, resulting in an estimated 67 million youngsters missing out on at least one crucial shot between 2019 and 2021.
He claimed that after a decade of stagnant growth, vaccination rates had returned to their 2008 levels, which has increased from measles, diphtheria, polio, and yellow fever epidemics.
