GENEVA / BEIJING: Although reported cases of Covid-19 and deaths are declining globally, and several countries have lifted restrictions, the pandemic is far from over – and it will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere, Director General of World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
This Friday marks two years since the outbreak of the pandemic.
"As a reminder, we made that assessment six weeks after we declared COVID-19 a global health emergency – when there were fewer than 100 cases and no deaths outside China. Two years later, more than 6 million people have died. Although reported cases and deaths are declining globally, and several countries have lifted restrictions, the pandemic is far from over – and it will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere," Tedros said.
Many countries in Asia and the Pacific are facing surges of cases and deaths. The virus continues to evolve, and we continue to face major obstacles in distributing vaccines, tests and treatments everywhere they are needed. WHO is concerned that several countries are drastically reducing testing.
"This inhibits our ability to see where the virus is, how it’s spreading and how it’s evolving," he noted.
Testing remains a vital tool in our fight against the pandemic, as part of a comprehensive strategy. WHO on Wednesday published new guidance on self-testing for COVID-19, recommending that self-tests should be offered in addition to professionally-administered testing services. This recommendation is based on evidence that shows users can reliably and accurately self-test, and that self-testing may reduce inequalities in testing access.
How countries use self-testing will need to be adapted according to national priorities, local epidemiology, and the availability of resources, with community input.
"We hope that our new guidance will also help to increase access to testing, which is too expensive for many low-income countries, where these tools could play an important role in expanding testing. WHO and its partners in the ACT Accelerator are urgently seeking further funding to ensure that all countries that need self-tests will be able to receive them as quickly as possible.
In readiness for these guidelines, WHO has contacted manufacturers to encourage them to apply for prequalification of self-tests. To date, WHO has granted emergency use listing to 5 rapid antigen tests for professional use, and we are gathering additional data to support the use of self-tests, Tedros added.
Meanwhile, China is lately tackling a COVID-19 spike with selective lockdowns and other measures that appear to slightly ease its draconian “zero tolerance” strategy.
In Hong Kong, which recorded more than 58,000 new cases on Thursday, barber shops and hair salons were reopening. Many are seeing that as an example of mixed messages from the government of the semi-autonomous Chinese territory that has been ordered to follow the “zero tolerance” approach used on the mainland.
The 402 cases of local transmission recorded on the mainland Thursday were quadruple the number of cases a week ago.
Of those, 165 were in the northeastern province of Jilin, mainly in the cities of Changchun and Jilin, where city authorities locked down 160 residential communities where multiple cases have been detected.
Authorities attributed the Jilin provincial outbreak to the highly contagious omicron variant, with more than 1,200 cases recorded nationwide since Friday, some of the highest numbers since the pandemic began spreading from the central city of Wuhan in 2020.
Still, control measures were less strict than in the past, in a possible sign that China is beginning to relax its “zero tolerance”″ approach to the pandemic. As recently as January, China was locking down entire cities, affecting millions of people.
(With inputs from AP News)