WHO warns of rising Covid-19 cases globally

GENEVA. – The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned of the rising trends of Covid-19 as winter approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, calling for increased vaccinations and surveillance, while a Chinese expert advocated for more frequent releases of Covid-19 data and an increase in the stockpile of antiviral medicine at grassroots hospitals to cope with a possible resurgence of the pandemic.

Deaths are increasing in some parts of the Middle East and Asia, while intensive care unit admissions are increasing in Europe and hospitalizations are increasing in several regions, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told an online news conference in Geneva on Wednesday.

According to Tedros, only 43 countries – less than a quarter of the 194 WHO member states – are reporting COVID-19 deaths to the agency, and only 20 provide information about hospitalizations. Whereas the WHO estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of people in hospitals now for Covid-19, Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said.

Zhuang Shilihe, a medical expert based in Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong, suggested that China should also strengthen its monitoring on Covid-19, especially for the prevalence of relevant variants in the mainland.

According to Zhuang, the statistics of Covid-19 cases should be released to the public more frequently, from the current once a month to a shortened interval duration.

During the colder months, which are just around the corner in the northern hemisphere, people are exposed to a higher risk of infection because they spend more time indoors together, and viruses that transmit through the air like COVID-19 will take advantage of that, the WHO’s top coronavirus expert Van Kerkhove said.

One of the WHO’s biggest concerns was how few at-risk people had recently received a Covid-19 vaccine, Tedros said, calling for the vulnerable not to wait to get a booster dose.

To further prepare for the response to the Covid-19 resurgence in the coming autumn and winter, and to maximize the protection of people’s lives and health, the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of China’s State Council recently issued a notice on the Covid-19 vaccination plan for key population groups. – Global Times