THE World Health Organisation (WHO) head said the planet can end the coronavirus emergency this year, although the virus killed someone every 12 seconds last week.

“We can end Covid-19 as a global health emergency, and we can do it this year,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the United Nations health agency’s executive board.

But to do so, he added, countries need to work harder to ensure equitable access to vaccines and treatment, track the virus and its emerging variants, and keep restrictions in place.

For months, WHO has demanded that countries do more to accelerate the distribution of vaccines in poorer nations, calling on all to vaccinate at least 70% of their populations by the middle of this year.

Half of its 194 member states missed the previous target of vaccinating 40% of their people by end-2021 and 85% of people in Africa have yet to get a single jab.

Tedros said: “We simply cannot end the emergency phase of the pandemic unless we bridge this gap.”

“A hundred cases were reported every three seconds on average last week, and somebody lost their life to Covid-19 every 12 seconds.”

Covid-19 has killed more than 5.5 million people since it first emerged in late 2019, and case numbers have been driven to record levels by its new Omicron variant.

Since the strain was first detected in southern Africa nine weeks ago, Tedros said 80 million cases have been reported his organisation – more than in all of 2020.

Omicron appears to cause less severe disease than previous variants and Tedros confirmed that “the explosion in cases has not been matched by a surge in deaths”.

He said the world will need to learn to live with Covid-19.

“We will need to learn to manage it through a sustained and integrated strategy for acute respiratory diseases,” he said, emphasising it is “dangerous to assume that Omicron will be the last variant or that this is the end game”.

“On the contrary,” he added, “globally the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge.”

“The potential for a more transmissible, more deadly variant remains very real.” – AFP, January 24, 2022.