WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros
Ghebreyesus, said in a statement:“This is not acceptable to me, and it should
not be acceptable to anyone.
“ Are some lives worth more than others?”
He said WHO was launching a new strategy to
scale up genomic surveillance, for deadly pathogens that had “epidemic and
pandemic potential” to tackle future threat of the virus.
According to him, COVID-19 has now taken
well over six million lives and infected no fewer than 483 million people.
He also said the UN health agency had
unveiled the updated Strategic Preparedness, Readiness and Response Plan for
COVID-19.
“This is our third strategic plan for
COVID-19, and it could and should be our last”, he said, laying out three
possible scenarios for how the pandemic could evolve this year.
“The most likely scenario is that the virus
continues to evolve, but the severity of disease it causes reduces over time as
immunity increases due to vaccination and infection.
“Periodic spikes in cases and deaths may
occur as immunity wanes, which may require periodic boosting for vulnerable
populations.
“In the best-case scenario, we may see less
severe variants emerge, and boosters or new formulations of vaccines won’t be
necessary.”
But, in the worst-case scenario, a more
virulent and highly transmissible variant could emerge, sooner or later, and
against this new threat, people’s protection against severe disease and death,
from prior vaccination or infection, “will wane rapidly”, he warned.
According to him, addressing this situation
will require significantly altering the current vaccines and making sure they
get to the people who are most vulnerable to severe disease.
In addition, he said equitable vaccination
remained the single most powerful tool at the world’s disposal, to save lives.
“Striving to vaccinate 70 per cent of the
population of every country remains essential for bringing the pandemic under
control, with priority given to health workers, older people and other at-risk
groups.’’