The World Health Organization chief said Tuesday that 90 million cases of coronavirus have been reported since the omicron variant was first identified 10 weeks ago — amounting to more than in all of 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With many countries easing their restrictive measures amid public fatigue about them, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyeus cautioned that omicron should not be underestimated even though it has shown to bring less severe illness than earlier variants — and cited “a very worrying increase in deaths in most regions of the world.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Tedros added. “It’s premature for any country either to surrender or to declare victory. This virus is dangerous and it continues to evolve before our very eyes.”Many European countries have begun easing lockdown measures, including Britain, France, Ireland and the Netherlands. Finland will end its COVID-19 restrictions this month.
“Now is not the time to lift everything all at once. We have always urged — always urged — caution in applying interventions as well as lifting those interventions in a steady and in a slow way, piece by piece,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19. Speaking to countries’ governments, he said: “Every country has to find its feet, know where it is, know where it wants to go, and chart its path ... You can look at what other countries are doing. But please don’t just follow blindly what every other country is doing.”
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