The head of the World Health Organization said on Friday that the drop in confirmed COVID-19 infections around the world was encouraging, but he cautioned against relaxing restrictions that have helped slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the number of reported infections globally has decreased for the fourth consecutive week, and the number of deaths has also decreased for the second consecutive week.
A Muslim woman participates in Friday prayers at the Dome of the Rock Mosque in the Al Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem’s Old City, Friday, Feb. 12, 2021 (AP Photo / Mahmoud Illean).
“These declines appear to be due to countries implementing public health measures more strictly,” Tedros said. “We should all be encouraged, but complacency is as dangerous as the virus itself.”
“Now is not the time for any country to relax measures or for any individual to lower their guard,” he added. “Every life that is lost now is even more tragic as vaccines begin to be distributed.”
While the figures reported by countries to the WHO for the week ending February 8 are still incomplete, the world body said that around 1.9 million newly confirmed cases have been recorded worldwide so far, compared to the 3.2 million of the previous week.
Tedros said members of a WHO expert mission that recently visited China to investigate the possible source of the outbreak will publish a summary of their findings next week.
Chinese scientists and the WHO team of international researchers said this week that the coronavirus most likely first appeared in humans after jumping from an animal, and an alternative theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory it was unlikely.
Peter Ben Embarek, the WHO mission leader, said on Friday that laboratories in Wuhan that his team visited stated that they had not been working with the virus that causes COVID-19, or had it in their collections prior to the outbreak. But he said it was possible that the virus was still present in samples that have not yet been tested.
He said the team had gotten a much better look at the early stages of the outbreak and concluded that there was not a large cluster of the disease in Wuhan or elsewhere in the city in the months leading up to the first cases in December 2019. But He added that scientists are still “far from understanding the origin and identifying the animal species or the routes by which the virus could have entered humans in December.”
Tedros, WHO director general, said the Geneva-based body held its first meeting this week to help define and diagnose what it called a post-COVID condition, also known as long-term COVID.
“This disease affects patients with both severe and mild COVID-19,” he said. “Part of the challenge is that long-term COVID patients can have a variety of different symptoms that can be persistent or can come and go.”
“Given the scale of the pandemic, we expect that many people will be affected by the post-COVID-19 condition,” Tedros said. “Of course, the best way to prevent prolonged COVID is to prevent COVID-19 in the first place.”
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