World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news briefing in Geneva on Wednesday that the end of the COVID-19 pandemic "is in sight," as fatalities worldwide hit their lowest since March 2020.
The health official said, "A marathon runner does not stop when the finish line comes into view, she runs harder with all the energy she has left. So must we. We can see the finish line, we are in a winning position, but now is the worst time to stop running. Now is the time to run harder and make sure we cross the line and reap the rewards of all our hard work."
End of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Ghebreyesus said that there is still the risk of more variants popping up and argued that deaths, disruptions, and uncertainty threaten the situation. On Wednesday, the global health agency released six policy briefs that outline key actions for governments to take to end the pandemic.
The briefs are based on the evidence and experience of the past 32 months and provide guidance on how to save lives, protect health systems, and avoid social and economic disruption. They are considered "an urgent call for governments to take a hard look at their policies and strengthen them for COVID-19 and future pathogens with pandemic potential," as per CNN.
While official case counts have become significantly underreported, trends showed a steady drop in cases both globally and in the United States. The latest WHO update noted that weekly case counts are falling in all regions, with an overall fall of 28% compared to a week before.
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In the U.S., cases have been steadily dropping for the last two months, based on data from Johns Hopkins University. The global health agency's weekly epidemiological update said on Wednesday that there were just over 11,000 fatalities reported between Sept. 5 and 11, a 22% decrease compared to the prior week.
According to NBC News, the United States is recording a weekly average of 478 deaths per day, which is far above its lowest rate ever. The nation has also yet to match the low from early July 2021. The seven-day average on July 6 was just 168 daily deaths and in June 2022, the average dropped as low as 258 daily deaths.
Coronavirus-Related Deaths
But new recorded coronavirus cases in the U.S. have decreased by 14% in the last two weeks to fewer than 73,000 per day, on average. Last week, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said that although the pandemic is not over yet, the U.S. has seen "an important shift in our fight against the virus."
Furthermore, the newly available bivalent booster shots, which target both the original coronavirus strain and the currently circulating omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, could provide better protection against both infection and transmission.
However, health officials cautioned that coronavirus still posed an "acute global emergency" and highlighted that during the first eight months of this year, more than 1 million people have lost their lives to the infection, The Guardian reported.
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