Global deaths from COVID-19 are declining, now the number of deaths per week is only 10% of the peak in January 2021. However, humanity still has a “long way to go” in the fight against the coronavirus, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday at a briefing in Geneva.
“Now we are in a better position than ever. The number of deaths recorded per week continues to decline, and it is now only 10% of the peak values of January 2021,” he said. However, the head of WHO recalled that “there are still large gaps in vaccination, especially in countries with low and middle incomes” per capita. The coronavirus is “still spreading and mutating, which poses the risk of a more dangerous variant emerging.”
According to the CEO, humanity “is starting to see glimmers of light at the end of the tunnel” in the fight against the pandemic, but there is still “a long way ahead, and the tunnel is still dark, with a lot of obstacles,” Ghebreyesus stated.
“We all need hope so that we can – and we will – reach the end of the tunnel and leave the pandemic behind. But we haven’t reached that yet. We are still in the tunnel,” Ghebreyesus continued. He recalled the need to take precautionary measures, including wearing masks, ensuring access to medicines and testing for coronavirus. The head of WHO noted that in low-income countries, only 19% of people are vaccinated, and access to “saving treatment is practically non-existent.” Over the past week, about 10 thousand deaths from covid were registered in the world. This is “too much, given that most of the deaths could have been prevented,” the CEO summed up.
As of September 21, WHO has received 610,393,563 reported cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic and 6,508,521 deaths.
