In a press conference in Geneva today, World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus warned that new waves of Covid-19 were sweeping across Europe and the U.S. and urged governments to reinstate the safety protocols—masking, social distancing, testing—that have proven effective in the past. The omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, are driving these new waves, he said, demonstrating that “Covid-19 is nowhere near over.”
Tedros reported that the WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee had just met and concluded that Covid-19 continues to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), according to which public health protocols should remain in place. Dr. Maria von Kerkhove, the WHO’s Technical Lead Officer for Covid-19, told today’s press conference that while the omicron subvariants don’t appear to be more severe than previous omicron variants, “the virus is spreading at a very intense level, at a global level.”
According to Bloomberg, Europe is at the center of the new wave of cases driven by the omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, in a situation in which public health protocols have largely been abandoned. At the end of June, Britain’s Office of National Statistics reported that an estimated 2.1 million people had tested positive for Covid. Dr. Mike Ryan, the head of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program reported in today’s press conference that Covid-19 cases globally had increased by 30% in the last two weeks, driven by BA.4 and BA.5 but also by the lifting of public health and social measures and other factors relating to testing, and accessibility to vaccines, among others.
