The pandemic remains a global health emergency, W.H.O. Said

With a significant increase in known coronavirus cases worldwide, the continued evolution of Omicron and increased pressure on public health systems, the World Health Organization has declared on Tuesday that the pandemic remained a public health emergency.

The agency, which is part of the United Nations, for the first time declared coronavirus outbreaks a " public health emergency of international concern" on January 30, 2020, almost two and a half years ago.

The decision to maintain the state of emergency worldwide was based on several factors, including that "surveillance has declined significantly - including testing and sequencing - making it increasingly difficult to assess the impact of variants on transmission, disease characteristics, and 'effectiveness of countermeasures', according to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director Director General of WHO

“The virus is circulating freely and countries are not effectively managing the burden of the disease according to their capacity, in terms of hospitalization for acute cases and the growing number of people with post-Covid-19 illness – often referred to as long Covid,” he told a news conference. in Geneva.

As of Monday, an average of more than 930,000 new confirmed virus cases are being reported worldwide each day, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering in Geneva. Johns Hopkins University. That's a 37% increase over the past two weeks. During the same period, there were an average of more than 1,700 deaths, an increase of 18%, according to data from Johns Hopkins.

The cases reported are considered a significant undercount of the true infection rate, like the W.H.O. noted, as testing and tracking has been reduced. Immunity is declining in wealthy countries that have had access to vaccines for about a year and a half, although vaccines remain highly protective against the worst outcomes.

Furthermore, countries like the United States have thrown away doses of the vaccine, while even two-thirds of the world's population is not fully vaccinated, according to the University of Oxford's Our World in Data project.

< p class="css -at9mc1 evys1bk0">These vaccines, although valuable, have become obsolete. U.S. regulators pledged last week to update 2020 vaccine recipes for this fall's booster campaign with new formulations meant to defend against ultra-contagious Omicron subvariants.

These fast-spreading subvariants, known as BA.4 and BA.5, are driving a summer surge of coronavirus in Europe, health officials say. BA.5 is dominant among new cases in the United States, where rising test positivity rates suggest that many places across the country are experiencing new outbreaks of infections.

As of the week ending Saturday, BA.5 accounted for 65% of new cases in the United States and BA.4 for 16%, according to estimates released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Together, the two subvariants accounted for approximately 52% of new cases just two weeks ago.

"The reporting of BA.5 is increasing in terms of reporting, and has increased significantly in the last four weeks alone,” said Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO Covid-19 technical lead. "We expect this trend to continue globally, but we will continue to assess it as we move forward. We need more data to...