Covid deaths down 95 percent this year but…: WHO’s warning on variant

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said that Covid-related deaths have dropped by 95 percent this year but the virus was still on the move. Covid-19 is here to stay and countries would have to learn how to manage it, the body said.

“We’re very encouraged by the sustained decline in reported deaths from Covid-19, which have dropped 95 percent since the beginning of this year,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“However, some countries are seeing increases, and over the past four weeks, 14,000 people lost their lives to this disease. And, as the emergence of the new XBB.1.16 variant illustrates, the virus is still changing, and is still capable of causing new waves of disease and death,” he warned.

The WHO chief reiterated that the health agency remained hopeful of declaring an end to Covid-19 as a public health emergency of international concern.

“But this virus is here to stay, and all countries will need to learn to manage it alongside other infectious diseases,” he said.

Warning of long Covid, Tedros said that an estimated one in 10 infections resulted in long Covid. All countries must address “the barriers to immunisation, whether it’s access, availability, cost or disinformation”, he said.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, said XBB sub-lineages were now dominant worldwide, calling or increased surveillance through testing “so that we can monitor the virus itself and understand what each of these mutations means”.

Knowledge could feed into vaccine composition and inform decisions on handling the virus, she added.