Covid-19: Most Countries Drop Guards, Testing: Who Worried
NEW DELHI, March 30: The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed concern as the number of people succumbing to Covid-19 shot up by over 40 per cent in the last week, despite a decline in cases everywhere.
“Between the end of January and early March 2022, there was a consistent decreasing trend in the number of new Covid-19 cases, which was followed by two consecutive weeks of increase in cases. During the week of 21 through 27 March 2022, the number of new cases declined again with a 14 per cent decrease as compared to the previous week. On the other hand, during the same period, the number of new weekly deaths has increased by 43 per cent,” the WHO said in a weekly bulletin on Wednesday.
The surge in coronavirus-induced fatalities was attributed to changes in how Covid-19 deaths were reported across the United States and Latin America, and by newly adjusted figures from India.
“Across the six WHO regions, over 10 million new cases and over 45,000 new deaths were reported. All regions reported decreasing trends in the number of new weekly cases and four regions reported a decreasing trend in new weekly deaths,” the agency said.
The WHO cautioned countries against dropping their comprehensive testing and other surveillance measures, saying that doing so would cripple efforts to accurately track the spread of the virus.
“Data are becoming progressively less representative, less timely and less robust,” it said. “This inhibits our collective ability to track where the virus is, how it is spreading and how it is evolving: information and analyses that remain critical to effectively end the acute phase of the pandemic.”
The warning comes against the backdrop of several countries, including the US, Canada, UK and India lifting nearly all Covid-19 containment measures and protocols. Less surveillance would particularly harm efforts to detect new Covid variants and undermine a potential response, the WHO warned.
Meanwhile, Omicron continues to be the dominant strain of Covid infections, accounting for 99.7 per cent of the genome sequences uploaded to GISAID in the last 30 days, the agency stated.
As for the newly detected recombinant variant of the Delta and Omicron strains, nicknamed Deltacron, there is no evidence at the moment to suggest it is more virulent or transmissible, the WHO said.
(Manas Dasgupta)
