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WHO hopes COVID and monkeypox end in 2023

WHO hopes COVID and monkeypox end in 2023

The World Health Organization (WHO) hopes that Covid-19 and rhinoceros will not be a public health emergency worldwide in 2023, when the two diseases will have completed their most severe stage.

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WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said one of the main lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is that countries need to respond quickly to sudden outbreaks of the disease.

Regarding COVID-19, he said the number of weekly deaths is now about a fifth of what it was a year ago.

Last week, less than 10,000 people lost their lives. “It’s still 10,000, and all countries can still do a lot to save lives,” he told a news conference.

“But we’ve come a long way. Hopefully sometime next year we can say that COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency.”

The WHO’s COVID-19 Emergency Committee, which advises the director-general on whether the virus constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, will discuss the criteria for determining whether or not to end the health emergency at a meeting in January. .

This panel will look at epidemics and variables such as Omicron and the impact of the virus, said Maria Van Kerkhove, who leads the WHO’s technical team on COVID.

She explained that the epidemic “was not the same as it was in the beginning,” as cases today have led to fewer hospitalizations and deaths. She added that “these deaths occur largely in the case of people who are not immunized,” or who have not received all the vaccines.

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The World Health Organization estimates that 30 billion doses of vaccines have been administered worldwide, yet 30% of the world’s population has received only one dose.

This virus will not go away. It is here to stay and all countries will need to learn to manage it alongside other respiratory diseases.

Nearly 650 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 6.6 million deaths have been recorded, according to the World Health Organization, which considers these numbers to be a significant underestimate.

“We will face many uncertainties and challenges in 2023. In low-income countries, only one out of every five people has been vaccinated,” said the UN chief.

He also stressed the need for a better understanding of the origins of the virus, which was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. “We continue to ask China to share its data and conduct the required studies to better understand the origins of this virus,” he said.

He stressed that “all hypotheses are still on the table,” including the hypothesis of a virus that would have spread from a laboratory in Wuhan.

Regarding monkeypox, Mr. Tedros noted that the global epidemic had taken the world by surprise.

More than 82,000 cases have been reported in 110 countries, but the fatality rate has remained low, with 65 deaths.

“If the current trend continues, we hope that next year we will also announce the end of this health emergency,” he concluded.