Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, has said COVID-19 remains a global health emergency, after a key advisory panel found the pandemic may be nearing a transition point where higher levels of immunity can lower virus-related deaths.
Speaking at the opening of WHO's annual executive board meeting today, Dr. Tedros said the world is in a far better situation than a year ago — when the highly transmissible Omicron variant was at its peak.
But he said in the last eight weeks, at least 170,000 people have died around the world in connection with COVID-19.
He called for at-risk groups to be fully vaccinated, an increase in testing and early use of antivirals, an expansion of lab networks, and a fight against misinformation about the pandemic.
Dr Tedros' comments came moments after WHO released the findings of its emergency committee on the pandemic which reported that some 13.1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered — with nearly 90 per cent of health workers and more than four in five people over 60 years old having completed the first series of jabs.
