Covid-19 far from being an endemic, can trigger large epidemics: WHO

Even with Covid-19 cases falling drastically in many countries that were once hotspots for the virus, some cities like China’s financial hub Shanghai still are in the grasp of the highly communicable disease not letting World Health authorities care less. Recently an official with the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that Covid-19 is far from becoming endemic and has the potential to trigger large. Epidemics around the globe.

Global Covid-19 cases surpassed 500 million on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, as cases of the highly contagious BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron surges in many countries in Asia and Europe. South Korea leads the world in the daily average number of new cases.

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan raised concern over considering that COVID-19 did settle down and become endemic, as that would mean the end of the problem, which is not. the case in reality. He further added that Covid-19 is far from settling down to a seasonal or transmission pattern and is still quite volatile in its spread.

“I certainly do not believe we’ve reached anything close to an endemic situation with this virus,” Ryan told a live question-and-answer session on the WHO’s social media channels.

He cited the case of malaria and tuberculosis as endemic diseases that still kills millions of people every year.

When a disease is consistently present but limited to a particular geographical area, it is called an endemic disease.

Meanwhile, WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove, who is isolating in the United States after contracting the infection said the virus is in circulation at a high level and is responsible for “huge amounts of death and devastation”.