- Eighteen months after the virus appeared in China, 4 million people worldwide have been killed by Covid-19.
- WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the world is in a dangerous moment of a pandemic.
- Ghebreyesus said: “The number of cases and hospitalizations in too many countries in the world has risen sharply.”
The World Health Organization stated that the world surpassed the “tragic milestone” of 4 million recorded Covid-19 deaths on Wednesday, adding that the true death toll from the epidemic may be higher.
WHO Director-General Tan Desai announced that since the outbreak in China in December 2019, a milestone of more than 18 months has been reached.
Tedros said at a press conference held at the WHO headquarters in Geneva: “The world is at a dangerous time for this pandemic. We have just passed the tragic milestone of 4 million recorded Covid-19 deaths. This may Underestimated the overall death toll.”
The director-general of the United Nations health agency said that some countries with high vaccination coverage are now “relaxing as if the pandemic is over”, abandoning public health measures and planning to introduce booster injections.
Read also | The UK says it is ready for 100,000 Covid cases per day
But he said that due to the rapid spread of virus variants and the “shocking inequality” in global vaccine access, the number of cases and hospitalizations in too many countries around the world has risen sharply.
Tedros said:
This has led to a severe lack of oxygen and treatment in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, and led to a wave of deaths.
“Vaccine nationalism, with a few countries occupying the largest share, is morally untenable
“At this stage of the pandemic, the fact that millions of health care workers are still unvaccinated is abhorrent.”
Tan Desai said that due to the unfair distribution of available doses, the speed of variants has exceeded that of vaccines, which he said also threatens the recovery of the global economy from the Covid-19 crisis.
“From an ethical, epidemiological or economic point of view, it is time for the world to unite and cope with this epidemic.”
