International Desk: The WHO said Wednesday that Covid-19 deaths had dropped by 95 percent since the start of the year — but warned the virus was still on the move.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization said Covid-19 was here to stay and countries would have to learn how to manage its ongoing non-emergency effects, including post-Covid-19 condition, or Long Covid.<\/p>\n
“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 told a press conference.<\/p>\n
“However, some countries are seeing increases, and over the past four weeks, 14,000 people lost their lives to this disease.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, said XBB sub-lineages were now dominant worldwide.<\/p>\n
They have an increase in growth advantage and are also showing immune escape, meaning people can be reinfected despite having been vaccinated or previously infected.<\/p>\n
She called for increased surveillance through testing “so that we can monitor the virus itself and understand what each of these mutations means”.<\/p>\n
That knowledge could feed into vaccine composition and inform decisions on handling the virus, she said.<\/p>\n
Tedros reiterated that the WHO remained hopeful of declaring an end to Covid-19 as a public health emergency of international concern, with the committee that advises him on the status due to convene next month for its regular quarterly meeting.<\/p>\n
“But this virus is here to stay, and all countries will need to learn to manage it alongside other infectious diseases,” he added.<\/p>\n
Tedros meanwhile said that an estimated one in 10 infections resulted in Long Covid, suggesting that hundreds of millions of people would need longer-term care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
International Desk: The WHO said Wednesday that Covid-19 deaths had dropped by 95 percent since the start of the year — but warned the virus was still on the move. The World Health Organization said Covid-19 was here to stay and countries would have to learn how to manage its ongoing non-emergency effects, including post-Covid-19 condition, or Long Covid. “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 told a press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30976,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30977,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30975\/revisions\/30977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}