The world’s only focus should now be to keep the transmission of COVID-19 as low as possible, said Dr. Michael Ryan, director of WHO’s emergency program.
“If we are smart, we can end the hospitalizations and the deaths and the tragedy associated with this pandemic” by the end of the year, he said at a news conference.
Ryan said the WHO was comfortable with the emerging data that many of the licensed vaccines appear to be helping to stem the explosive spread of the virus.
“If vaccines start to have an impact not only on death and not just hospitalization, but also on the dynamics of transmission and the risk of transmission, then I believe that we will accelerate the control of this pandemic.”
But Ryan warned against complacency, saying that nothing was guaranteed in an evolving epidemic.
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“At the moment, the virus is under control,” he said.
The WHO director-general, for his part, said it was “unfortunate” that younger, healthier adults in some wealthy countries were being vaccinated against the coronavirus before health workers at risk in developing countries.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the immunizations provided by the UN-supported effort COVAX started this week in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, but regretted that this was happening just three months after countries like Britain, the United States and Canada started vaccinating their children. populations themselves.
“Countries are not competing with each other,” he said. “This is a common race against the virus. We are not asking countries to put their own people at risk. We are asking all countries to be part of a global effort to suppress the virus everywhere.”
But WHO has stopped criticizing countries that are moving to vaccinate younger, healthier populations, rather than donating their doses to countries that have not yet been able to protect their most vulnerable populations.
“We cannot tell individual countries what to do,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior adviser to WHO.
Tedros also noted that, for the first time in seven weeks, the number of COVID-19 cases increased last week, after six consecutive weeks of decline. He described the increase as “disappointing”, but said it was not surprising.
Tedros said that WHO is working to better understand why cases have increased, but part of that increase appears to be due to “relaxation of public health measures”.
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AP medical writer Maria Cheng reported from London.
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