GENEVA: The world must pull together and make the difficult choices needed to end the Covid-19 pandemic within 2022, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, chief of the World Health Organisation said.
Talking to newsmen in Geneva today, he said, “2022 must be the year we end the pandemic”.
As end-of-year festivities approach, the UN health agency chief said countries should control the national events linked to the holidays because allowing crowds to gather would be a perfect platform for Omicron to spread.
It would be better to cancel events now and celebrate later “than to celebrate now and grieve later”, he added.
Since it was first reported in South Africa in November, Omicron has been identified in dozens of countries, dashing hopes that the worst of the pandemic is over.
The WHO has said the heavily mutated variant is spreading at an unprecedented rate in some countries like USA, Britain, and Europe, etc.
“There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant,” Tedros said, cautioning that the strain appears to have the ability to double its infections every 1.5 to three days.
“That is really fast.”
