The single focus of the world should now be to keep COVID-19 transmission as low as possible, said Dr. Michael Ryan, director of the WHO emergency program.
“If we are smart, we can end the hospitalizations, deaths and tragedy associated with this pandemic,” by the end of the year, he told a media briefing.
Ryan said the WHO was reassured by the emerging data that many of the authorized vaccines appear to help reduce the explosive spread of the virus.
If vaccines begin to have an impact not only on death and not just on hospitalization, but have a significant impact on the dynamics of transmission and the risk of transmission, then I think we will accelerate to control this pandemic.
But Ryan warned against satisfaction, saying nothing is guaranteed in an evolving epidemic.
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“Right now the virus is very much in control,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Director-General of WHO said it was “unfortunate” that younger and healthier adults in some rich countries were vaccinated against coronavirus in front of high-risk health workers in developing countries.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the immunizations offered by the UN-backed effort COVAX began this week in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, but lamented that this is only three months after countries such as Britain, the United States and Canada began to vaccinate their own populations.
“Countries are not in a race with each other,” he said. “This is a common race against the virus. We are not asking countries to endanger their own people. We are asking all countries to be part of a global effort to eradicate the virus everywhere.”
But the WHO has stopped criticizing countries that aim to vaccinate younger and healthier populations instead of donating their doses to countries that have not yet been able to protect their most vulnerable people.
“We can’t tell individual countries what to do,” said Dr Bruce Aylward, WHO’s senior adviser.
Tedros also noted that for the first time in seven weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 increased last week, after six consecutive weeks of declining numbers. He described the growth as “disappointing”, but said it was not surprising.
Tedros said the WHO was working to better understand why the cases had increased, but that part of that increase seemed to be due to “relaxed public health measures”.
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AP medical writer Maria Cheng reported from London.
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