The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is attending a press conference organized by the Geneva Association of United Nations Correspondents (ACANU) amid the COVID-19 outbreak caused by the new coronavirus, on 3 July 2020 at WHO headquarters. in Geneva.
COFFRINI FABRIC | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – The head of the World Health Organization said on Friday that a disturbing trend of rising cases in Covid has led to global infections now approaching their highest level since the onset of the pandemic.
“Cases and deaths are increasing at alarming rates around the world,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a briefing focusing on Papua New Guinea and the Western Pacific region. .
“Globally, the number of new cases per week has almost doubled in the last two months. This is closer to the highest infection rate we have seen so far during the pandemic,” he continued.
“Some countries that previously avoided widespread spread are now seeing a sharp increase in infections,” Tedros said, citing Papua New Guinea as one example.
Tedros said the United Nations health agency would continue to assess the evolution of the coronavirus crisis and “adjust advice accordingly.”
In accordance with international health regulations, Tedros said the WTO’s emergency committee met on Thursday and expected to receive their advice on Monday.
“Globally, our message to all people in all countries remains the same. We all have a role to play in ending the pandemic,” he said.
To date, more than 139 million Covid cases have been reported worldwide, with 2.9 million deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The WHO declared the coronavirus a global pandemic on March 11 last year.
‘Shocking imbalance’
Tedros said earlier that one of the key priorities of the WHO is to increase the ambition of COVAX, an initiative working for global fair access to Covid vaccines, to help all countries end the pandemic.
The COVAX scheme is expected to deliver nearly 100 million vaccines to humans by the end of March, but it has so far distributed only about 38 million doses.
The WHO said it hoped the initiative would catch up in the coming months, but condemned what it described as a ‘shocking imbalance’ in the distribution of vaccines between high-income and low-income countries.
The health agency also criticized countries that sought outside the COVAX initiative for political or commercial reasons.
Earlier this year, the WTO’s Tedros warned that the world was on the verge of a “catastrophic moral failure” due to inequality in vaccines.
He said a ‘first approach’ to vaccines would endanger the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world, adding that the approach was ‘self-destructive’, as it would encourage storage and likely prolong the health crisis.