WHO chief warns of complacency as international virus circumstances drop

The head of the World Health Organization mentioned Friday that the drop in confirmed COVID-19 infections world wide was encouraging, however cautioned towards enjoyable restrictions which have helped curb the unfold of the coronavirus.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus mentioned the variety of reported infections globally has declined for the fourth week in a row, and the variety of deaths additionally fell for the second consecutive week.
A Muslim lady takes half in Friday prayers on the Dome of the Rock Mosque within the Al Aqsa Mosque advanced within the Old City of Jerusalem, Friday, Feb. 12, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
“These declines appear to be due to countries implementing public health measures more stringently,” Tedros mentioned. “We should all be encouraged, but complacency is as dangerous as the virus itself.”
“Now is not the time for any country to relax measures or for any individual to let down their guard,” he added. “Every life that is lost now is all the more tragic as vaccines are beginning to be rolled out.”
While the figures reported by international locations to the WHO for the week ending Feb. 8 are nonetheless incomplete, the worldwide physique mentioned thus far about 1.9 million newly confirmed circumstances have been registered worldwide, down from greater than 3.2 million the earlier week.
Tedros mentioned members of a WHO knowledgeable mission who lately visited China to analyze the doable supply of the outbreak would publish a abstract of their findings subsequent week.
Chinese scientists and the WHO’s crew of worldwide researchers mentioned this week that the coronavirus most certainly first appeared in people after leaping from an animal, and an alternate idea that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab was unlikely.
Peter Ben Embarek, the chief of the WHO mission, mentioned Friday the labs in Wuhan that his crew visited said they’d not been working with the virus that causes COVID-19, or had it of their collections earlier than the outbreak. But he mentioned it was doable the virus might nonetheless be current in samples that haven’t but been analyzed.
He mentioned the crew had gained a a lot better perception into the early phases of the outbreak and concluded there was no massive cluster of the illness in Wuhan or elsewhere across the metropolis within the months previous to the primary circumstances in December 2019. But he added that scientists are nonetheless “far away from understanding the origin and identifying animal species and, or the pathways from which the virus could have entered the human in December.”
Tedros, the WHO’s director-general, mentioned that the Geneva-based physique had this week held its first assembly to assist outline and diagnose what he referred to as post-COVID situation, also called lengthy COVID.

“This illness affects patients with both severe and mild COVID-19,” he mentioned. “Part of the challenge is that patients with long COVID can have a range of different symptoms that can be persistent or can come and go.”

“Given the scale of the pandemic, we expect many people to be affected by post COVID-19 condition,” mentioned Tedros. “Of course, the best way to prevent long COVID is to prevent COVID-19 in the first place.”