Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Beware. The pandemic was only down, not out.
And it is returning to 110 countries, the health global watchdog has warned.
Only 58 countries could achieve the target of vaccinating 70 percent of people, which means the other countries are vulnerable to the next waves of Covid-19.
“Covid-19 is only changing; it is not over. We have made progress, but it is not enough”, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.
Cautioning the people, he said the infection cases are rising in 110 countries and are being driven mainly by two fast-spreading Omicron sub-variants, according to media reports on Thursday.
In the last few weeks, India has also seen a massive jump in cases. On Thursday, over 18,000 cases and 39 deaths were reported.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said this week that the fast-spreading Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5 together make up half of the coronavirus cases in the USA.
As of June 25, BA.5 made up 36.6 percent of the total coronavirus cases in the US while BA.4 accounted for 15.7 percent. Together, they accounted for about 52 percent of new cases in the US.
“On Covid-19, driven by BA.4 and BA.5 in many places, cases are on the rise in 110 countries, causing an overall increase in global cases by 20 percent and deaths have risen in three of the six WHO regions even as the global figure remains relatively stable,” he said.
Ghebreyesus said the ability to track the virus is under threat as reporting and genomic sequences are declining, making it harder to track Omicron and analyze the variants emerging soon.
The WHO chief also complained about the slow pace of vaccination in lower-income countries, making the at-risk population in those areas more vulnerable to future waves of the virus.
“We’re close to the mid-point of the year, where the WHO had called on all countries to vaccinate at least 70 percent of their population”, he said. In the past 18 months, over 12 billion vaccines have been distributed around the world and 75 percent of health workers and over-60s are now vaccinated.
The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal, has estimated that we have saved 20 million lives because of Covid-19 vaccines.
But hundreds of millions of people, including tens of millions of health workers and older people in lower-income countries, remain unvaccinated, which means they are more vulnerable to future waves of the virus, he said.
Ghebreyesus said while the hoarding of vaccines by rich and manufacturing countries was the major barrier to access last year, increasingly political commitment to getting vaccines out to people, and challenges of disinformation have been hurdles at the national level in 2022.
With only 58 countries hitting the 70 percent target, some have said it’s not possible for low-income countries to make it, he said, adding the average rate of vaccination in low-income countries is 13 percent.
He said that in all countries, 100 percent of at-risk groups should be vaccinated and boosted as soon as possible. Even relatively mild Covid cases are disruptive and damaging.
While honing vaccines to the evolving virus variants makes sense, he said he was concerned that the pace of mutation means the world is continuing to play catch up. Building on existing vaccines that limit the severity and prevent death, developing second-generation vaccines that stop or at least lower infection would be a major step forward, he said.
He said the ideal solution would be the development of a pan-coronavirus” vaccine that covers all the variants so far and potentially future ones.