The sharp drop in Covid-19 screening activities around the world is forcing the World Health Organization (WHO) to fly "blind" in the face of a virus that is still raging and continues to evolve, a-t she lamented on Tuesday.

WHO urges caution

"In the face of a deadly virus, ignorance does not bring happiness," said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“Globally, reported cases and deaths...continue to decline, which is very encouraging.

Last week, just over 15,000 deaths were reported to WHO - the lowest weekly total since March 2020," he told a press conference in Geneva.

He urged caution because in the absence of tests the WHO receives less information on transmission and sequencing.

This situation "makes us increasingly blind to the patterns of transmission and evolution" of the virus, he said, calling on all countries to continue to monitor the disease.

The governments involved

Attending the press conference, Bill Rodriguez, CEO of FIND (Global Alliance for Diagnostics), an organization that collaborates with the WHO, also denounced the decision taken by various governments around the world to "let their guard down ” in the face of the virus.

“Over the past four months, right in the middle of (the) Omicron variant, as East Asian cities lock down and vaccination rates stagnate, testing rates have dropped by 70-90% in the whole world,” he said.

And this despite the fact that screening capabilities have never been greater.

18 million dead worldwide

The Covid-19 pandemic would have caused more than 18 million deaths worldwide between the beginning of 2020 and the end of 2021, more than triple the official toll, according to a study published on March 11 in the medical journal The Lancet.

And the pandemic continues to rage, according to the WHO.

China has thus been facing an epidemic outbreak since March that has affected many provinces to varying degrees. “This virus will not disappear simply because countries stop looking for it.

It's still spreading, it's still changing, and it's still killing,” Dr. Tedros recalled.

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