Medical workers move a patient to the intensive care unit (ICU) of the Sotiria hospital, in the midst of the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19), in Athens, Greece, on March 1, 2021.
Giorgos Moutafis | Reuters
World Health Organization officials said on Wednesday that scientists are trying to understand why Covid-19 cases are suddenly increasing in much of the world after weeks of falling infections.
There were 2.6 million new cases reported worldwide last week, an increase of 7% over the previous week, the WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update that reflects data received on Sunday morning. This follows six consecutive weeks of reduction in new cases worldwide.
The reversal may be caused by the emergence of several new and more contagious variants of the coronavirus, relaxing public measures and so-called pandemic fatigue, in which people tire of taking precautions, the WHO said in its weekly report. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonoses unit, said during a question and answer event at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday that the global health agency is trying to better understand what is causing the reversal of trends in each region and country.
“I can say that we are concerned with the introduction of vaccines and vaccinations in several countries, we still need people to carry out their measurements on an individual level,” she said, asking people to practice physical detachment and continue wearing masks when they are close to others people.
“Seeing this week of rising trends, it is a very severe warning to all of us that we need to stay on course,” said Van Kerkhove. “We need to continue adhering to these measures at hand.”
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergency program, suggested that the increase may be because “we may be relaxing a little bit before we have the full impact of vaccination”. He added that he understands the temptation to socialize more and return to more normal behavior, but “the problem is each time we do this before the virus exploits it.”
Ryan reiterated that the cause of the increase in cases remains unclear, but added that the tried and true public health measures that were emphasized during the pandemic are still effective.
“When cases are decreasing it is never everything we do and when they are increasing it is never our fault,” he said.
Ryan noted that deaths have not yet increased with cases, but that could change in the coming weeks. Hopefully, he said, an increase in deaths can be prevented due to vaccination of the people most vulnerable to the disease.
Although the launch of vaccines is cause for optimism in some countries, Ryan noted that many nations around the world have not yet received the doses. He said 80% of doses were administered in only 10 countries.
WHO’s observations echo those made recently by federal officials in the United States. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been warning for days that the decline in new daily cases in the United States has stagnated and increased.
In the past seven days, the U.S. has reported an average of more than 65,400 new cases daily, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. This is well below the peak of about 250,000 new cases every day that the country reported in early January, but it is still well above the rate of infection that the US saw during the summer when the virus swept the Solar Belt.
“At this level of cases, with the variants spreading, we can completely lose the ground we have conquered with difficulty,” said Walensky on Monday. “With these statistics, I am really concerned that more states are revoking the exact public health measures that we recommend to protect the people of Covid-19.”
“Please listen to me clearly: at this level of cases with propagation of variants, we can completely lose the ground conquered with so much effort,” she said.