During a media briefing in Geneva Monday, World Trade Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said vaccines will help save lives, but if countries depend entirely on vaccines then they are making a mistake. He credited the rise in Covid-19 cases in certain regions to relaxing of public health measures, virus variants, and “people letting down their guard”.
“Vaccines will help to save lives, but if countries rely solely on vaccines, they’re making a mistake,” Tedros said.
Urging countries to stand by the basic public health measures as the foundation of their Covid-19 response, Tedros added that despite 250 million vaccine doses having been administered worldwide, there has been a global increase in cases for the first time in two months in the past week.
He informed that the reported surge in coronavirus cases are from four of WHO’s 6 regions: the Americas, Europe, South East Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, which Tedros called “disappointing” but not “surprising”.
He pointed out this is a global disaster that requires a steady and coordinated global response, adding that Covid is just one warning millions of people face every day and we must remember that.
It also said that it is encouraging to see that vaccine shots for medical workers were finally being given in poorer nations like the West African countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast.
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Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO technical lead for Covid-19, has termed the recent global surge a “stern warning for all of us”.
She said, “If the last week tells us anything, it’s that this virus will rebound…We cannot let it. We’ve all been in a position previously where we’ve gotten transmission down to very low numbers and cannot allow it to take off again, especially as we have vaccines rolling out.”
Further notifying countries to abide by the Covid-19 guidelines that were announced on 4 February 2020, Kerkhove said active case finding, contact tracing, cluster investigation, isolation and clinical care, supported quarantine of contacts as well as social distancing and hand-washing on an individual level, must be followed.