Medical personnel move a patient to the intensive care unit (ICU) of Sotiria Hospital, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Athens, Greece, March 1, 2021.
Giorgos Moutafis | Reuters
World Health Organization officials said Wednesday that scientists are trying to understand why Covid-19 cases are suddenly ticking over much of the world after weeks of falling infections.
2.6 million new cases were reported around the world last week, up 7% from the week before, the WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update that lists data received as of Sunday morning. That follows six consecutive weeks of diminishing new cases around the world.
The turnaround could be driven by the emergence of several new, more contagious variants of the coronavirus, relaxation of government measures and so-called pandemic fatigue, where people are getting tired of following precautions, WHO said in its weekly report. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis division, said on Wednesday at a question-and-answer event at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva that the global health agency is trying to better understand what might be causing the region and every country is caused.
“I can tell you that we are concerned about the introduction of vaccines and vaccination in a number of countries, we still need people to implement their measures at an individual level,” she said, urging people to physically distance themselves. take it and keep going. wearing masks around others.
“Seeing this week-long trend is a pretty stern warning to all of us that we have to stay on track,” said Van Kerkhove. “We must continue to adhere to these measures.”
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergency program, suggested the resurgence could be because “we might just relax a little bit before we get the full impact of vaccination.” He added that he understands the temptation to socialize more and return to more normal behavior, but “the problem is every time we’ve done that before the virus took advantage of that.”
Ryan reiterated that the cause of the upsurge remains unclear in cases, but added that the tried-and-true public health measures highlighted during the pandemic are still effective.
“When cases decline, it’s never all we do and when they increase, it’s never all our fault,” he said.
Ryan noted that the number of deaths has not yet increased with cases, but that may change in the coming weeks. Hopefully, he said, an increase in deaths can be prevented by the vaccination of those most vulnerable to the disease.
While the rollout of vaccines is cause for optimism in some countries, Ryan noted that many countries around the world have not yet received doses. He said 80% of the doses have been administered in just 10 countries.
The WHO’s comments are consistent with those recently made by federal officials in the United States. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been warning for days that the decline in the number of daily new cases in the US has stalled and is rising.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the US reported an average of more than 65,400 new cases per day for the past seven days. That’s well below the peak of about 250,000 new cases the country reported every day in early January, but it’s still well above the infection rate the US saw during the summer when the virus crossed the Solar Belt.
“At this level of cases, with variants spreading, we are about to completely lose the hard-earned soil we’ve extracted,” Walensky said Monday. “With these statistics, I am really concerned that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from Covid-19.”
“Please hear me clearly: at this level of instances where variants spread, we will completely lose the hard-earned soil we’ve extracted,” she said.