TheCable

Tedros Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), says there is a surge in COVID infections in 110 countries.

Ghebreyesus, who said this at a media briefing on Thursday, warned countries not to relax as the pandemic is “far from over”.

The WHO DG said a significant number of cases are driven by the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants, while the BA.5 is likely to soon become the dominant coronavirus variant in England.

“On COVID-19, driven by BA.4 and BA.5 in many places, cases are on the rise in 110 countries, causing overall global cases to increase by 20 percent and deaths have risen in three of the six WHO regions even as the global figure remains relatively stable,” he said.

The WHO chief said while more than 12 billion vaccines have been distributed around the world, “hundreds of millions ” of people in low-income countries remain unvaccinated.

“We’re close to the mid-point of the year, which is the point at which WHO had called on all countries to vaccinate at least 70 percent of their population,” he said.

“In the past 18 months, more than 12 billion vaccines have been distributed around the world and 75 percent of the world’s health workers and over-60s are now vaccinated.

“The Lancet estimates that 20 million lives have been saved because of vaccines. On the flip side, hundreds of millions of people, including tens of millions of health workers and older people in lower-income countries remain unvaccinated, which means they are more vulnerable to future waves of the virus.”