COVID-19 soon no more dangerous than seasonal flu, says WHO | Coronavirus
L' ;World Health Organization reiterates its call on Beijing to be more transparent in sharing data on the pandemic.
WHO hopes to lower its maximum alert level again this year.
COVID-19 will soon be comparable to the threat of seasonal flu, said Friday the World Health Organization, which hopes to lower its maximum alert level again this year.
I think we're getting to the point where we can look at COVID-19 the same way we look at seasonal flu, which is a health threat, a virus that will continue to kill, but a virus that doesn't disrupt our society. or our hospital systems, said the head of WHO's emergency programs, Michael Ryan, in a press conference.
Alongside him, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was very pleased to see that, for the first time, the weekly number of deaths reported over the past four weeks has increased. was lower than that recorded when we first used the word pandemic three years ago.
He thus expressed confidence that the x27;WHO could lower its maximum alert level this year.
World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (File photo)
“We are certainly in a much better position today than at any time during the pandemic.
—Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General
The WHO had declared a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020 – when the world had fewer than 100 cases and no deaths outside of China – but that was only when the Dr Tedros had called the situation a pandemic in March 2020, when the world had taken full measure of the seriousness of the health threat.
Three years later, nearly seven million deaths from COVID-19 have been reported, although we know that the number of deaths from COVID-19 is higher, he said.
And even though we have more and more hope that the pandemic will end, the question of how it started remains unanswered, he noted.
In this regard, he pointed the finger at China, which, without warning the WHO, published at the end of January − then removed from the world's largest SARS-CoV-2 sequence database (GISAID ) − data that could potentially shed light on the origin of COVID-19 for scientists.
Experts from the World Health Organization visited the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, under high surveillance. (File photo, February 2021)
It wasn't until last Sunday that the WHO was informed of this, not by China, but by scientists. The data, which comes from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, relates to samples taken from the Huanan market in Wuhan, the city where the virus was first detected in 2020, including in raccoon dogs. /p>
This data, which scientists were able to download and analyze while it was online, does not provide a definitive answer to the question of how the pandemic began, Dr Tedros explained, but it would have could − and should − be shared three years ago.
“We continue to call on China to be transparent in sharing Datas.
— Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of WHO
We have asked the Chinese CDC to make this data available in full, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO COVID-19 Manager.
Transmission to humans from an intermediary animal present in the Wuhan market or lab leak, several theories are circulating on the origin of COVID-19.
The new Chinese data provide additional elements, said Ms. Van Kerkhove, but many questions remain open, in particular on the animals sold on the market of the Chinese city: were they domestic animals or not, and where did they come from?
