We’ve Pretty Much Stopped Acting Like COVID’s a Problem — WHO Says it’s Not Done Yet

Cities, counties and states around the nation are talking about big increases in COVID activity. All that talk is pretty much being ignored. People are tired of COVID and the restrictions government imposed to stop the spread.

Some officials are loudly proclaiming that the pandemic is over and COVID is under control.

Not so fast says the World Health Organization (WHO) and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says don’t stop doing those safety measures.

“The virus is running freely and countries are not effectively managing the disease burden based on their capacity, in terms of both hospitalization for acute cases and the expanding number of people with post COVID-19 condition — often referred to as long COVID,” Tedros said.

He’s now calling on governments worldwide to reboot surveillance, testing and virus sequencing because the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants are now dominant in many countries, including the U.S.

They are driving rising hospitalizations and deaths.

While Tedros and WHO are worried, this country’s top COVID spokesman and expert, Dr. Anthony Faucci noted the BA.5 is now making up most of the new cases in the U.S. However, he says while we should take the variation seriously, it will not — and should not — disrupt our lives.

“It’s something that, A, we don’t panic on, B, we don’t let it disrupt our lives, but we take it seriously enough and utilize the tools that we have to mitigate,” Fauci said.

Both he and Tedros say the current vaccines should protect us from hospitalizations and death. “We’re in a much better position than at the beginning of the pandemic. Of course, there’s been a lot of progress. We have safe and effective tools that prevent infections, hospitalizations and deaths. However, we should not take them for granted,” Tedros said.

Source link: The Hill — https://bit.ly/3aNIAVK