The World Health Organization’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has urged countries to increase their COVID-19 sequencing efforts and share data with the global community in order to detect and track the emergence and spread of new variants. The Director-General stated that despite the progress made in the fight against the pandemic, such as the development of vaccines, the number of sequences being shared has dropped by over 90% since the peak of the Omicron wave and the number of countries sharing sequences has fallen by a third.
“It’s understandable that countries cannot maintain the same levels of testing and sequencing they had during the Omicron peak, but at the same time, the world cannot close its eyes and hope this virus will go away. It won’t,” said the Director-General. He also emphasized the importance of testing at-risk individuals to ensure they receive adequate care and in tracking the virus remains vital.
The Director-General acknowledged that globally, the world is in a better position than it was a year ago, with the number of deaths reported to WHO dropping by almost 90% since February of last year. However, he noted that the number of weekly reported deaths has plateaued between 10 and 14 thousand deaths per week and that the world cannot accept these numbers when it has the tools to prevent them.
He also highlighted that more data is needed to understand the impact of the pandemic, with only 53 out of 194 countries providing data on deaths that are disaggregated by age and sex. He urged all countries to provide this data to get clearer picture of who is dying and why, as well as focus on fully vaccinating the most at-risk groups, especially older people.