The World Health Organization’s (WHO) study suggests that a majority of the world’s population is vulnerable to COVID-19, indicating that the virus can be around for longer.
The global health organization warned that the coronavirus is “not going away,” adding that about 50,000 people are still dying from the infection every week.
“That’s not where we want to be,” Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO’s Health Emergencies Program executive director, said of COVID-19 deaths at a news conference at the Geneva headquarters of the agency.
He pointed out that the countries in the northern hemisphere will soon enter the winter season and the current predictions of coronavirus numbers makes the situation far from ideal. Also, the healthcare systems of developing countries are suffering from the pressure after nine months of the pandemic.
Ryan said the virus still has a “long way to burn.” WHO officials said they’re starting to see “worrying patterns” in the number of COVID-19 outbreaks, especially in countries belonging to the Northern Hemisphere as it approaches the colder seasons. This is because the arrival of winter means that health workers have to deal with the flu season along with the coronavirus pandemic.
“It has not burned out, it is not burning out, it is not going away and especially for those countries entering their winter season in terms of people coming together more indoors,” Ryan said.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove Technical Lead on COVID-19 WHO
“What’s really important right now is for countries in their response is that they break down the problem, they break down the outbreak into the lowest administrative level as possible as the data will allow. It’s not just about case numbers. These are incredibly important and we need to be able to track these trends but we also need to look at hospitalizations, we need to look at ICU occupancy and how many people are being admitted into intensive care.”
European health authorities have been reporting a growing number of COVID-19 cases for weeks. More than half of the European countries have reported a 10 percent or greater rise in cases over the past two weeks and seven of those have seen more than double the number of newly reported cases, WHO reports.
According to data collected by Johns Hopkins University data, health officials in the US record an average of around 39,000 new COVID-19 cases every day.
