The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned under vaccinated communities that they remain vulnerable to to threats of possible COVID-19 outbreaks that could arise post the acute pandemic period.
WHO chief of emergencies, Mike Ryan in a recent statement, highlighted that the virus was unlikely to go away completely, but could probably morph into mild transmissions.
He said the under-vaccinated communities remained vulnerable to threats of possible outbreaks that could arise post the acute pandemic period.
“With regards to the pandemic, we have been saying this for a very long time. The acute phase of the pandemic, the pandemic that’s been associated with the tragedy of deaths and hospitalizations — can end in 2022. The virus itself is very unlikely to go away completely and will probably settle down into a pattern of transmission, low level causing occasional outbreaks in under-vaccinated populations.
“And we hope that is the end game, but we are not there yet. This is going to be a bumpy road on the way to low levels of COVID-19, but I think the most important thing at this moment is we need to be careful about changing tactics and strategies immediately on the basis of what we are seeing in early Omicron data,” said Ryan.
Ryan discouraged governments from easing their COVID-19 control measures on the basis of initial preliminary studies as that could trigger a surge in new infections.
WHO said acute COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations could end this year if governments remain vigilant in enforcing public health measures set to control the spread of the virus.
The government last week extended the level two lockdown measures by a further two weeks and deferred the reopening of schools to curb the spread of the Omicron variant.
The latest statistics released by the Health ministry show that on Monday, there were 1 209 new COVID-19 cases recorded, while 15 people succumbed to the virus.
This comes after a combination of influenza and corona (flurona) have been detected in Israel and also a new variant with 46 mutations has been discovered in France.
