GENEVA: The World Health Organization chief warned yesterday that it is too early for countries to either declare victory over COVID-19 or give up attempts to halt transmission. "It is premature for any country to either surrender or to declare victory,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters. "This virus is dangerous, and it continues to evolve before our very eyes.” His comment came as Denmark yesterday became the first EU country to lift all of its domestic COVID curbs despite record numbers of cases of the milder Omicron variant, with a number of other countries eying similar moves.
Kuwait yesterday reported 6,436 new COVID-19 cases, in addition to two deaths and 5,658 recoveries. The number of patients in ICUs went down from 91 on Monday to 90 yesterday. The number of patients in hospital rose from 480 to 482, while total active cases increased from 51,718 to 52,467. The percentage of daily new cases to new tests dropped from 20.7 percent to 17.7 percent, while the percentage of recovery remained unchanged at 90 percent.
"We’re concerned that a narrative has taken hold in some countries that because of vaccines and because of Omicron’s high transmissibility and lower severity, preventing transmission is no longer possible, and no longer necessary,” Tedros said. "Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said, stressing that "more COVID-19 transmission means more deaths.”
The UN health agency chief pointed out that since Omicron was first spotted in southern Africa 10 weeks ago, nearly 90 million cases have been reported to the WHO - more than in all of 2020. And while the new COVID variant is known to be milder, he stressed that "we are now starting to see a very worrying increase in deaths in most regions of the world”.
It is vital, he said, to keep striving to halt transmission of the virus. "We are not calling for any country to return to so-called lockdown,” Tedros said, adding though that "we are calling on all countries to protect their people using every tool in the toolkit, not vaccines alone”. The WHO head stressed the need to continue tracking emerging variants, including the Omicron sub-lineage BA.2. "This virus will continue to evolve, which is why we call on countries to continue testing, surveillance and sequencing,” he said. "We can’t fight this virus if we don’t know what it’s doing.”
The sub-variant is even more infectious than the original version, according to a Danish study published on Monday. BA.2 - also called "stealth Omicron” - was detected earlier this year and has displaced the first Omicron variant, known as BA.1, as the dominant strain in Denmark. A person infected with BA.2 has a 39 percent chance of transmitting the virus to someone else in their household within a week, compared to a 29 percent risk with BA.1, Denmark’s SSI health authority said in a statement.
The study by SSI researchers and Danish universities involved 18,000 people and was carried out between Dec 20 and Jan 18. SSI doctor Camilla Holten Moller said BA.2 was more likely to infect unvaccinated people than BA.1. Those who have been fully jabbed, particularly those who have received a booster dose, are much less likely to catch the strain, she added.
Denmark waved goodbye to facemasks and health passes yesterday as it became the first European Union country to lift all of its domestic COVID curbs. Only a few restrictions remain in place at the country’s borders, for unvaccinated travelers arriving from non-Schengen countries. After a first attempt at lifting restrictions between September and November, the Scandinavian country once again ditched its COVID checks and limited opening hours for bars and restaurants.
The easing comes as Denmark registers around 40,000-50,000 new COVID cases a day, or almost one percent of the country’s 5.8 million inhabitants. Health officials believe those figures will soon start going down. More than 60 percent of Danes have received a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine - one month ahead of health authorities’ schedule - compared to an EU average of just under 45 percent.
Including those who have recently had COVID, health authorities estimate that 80 percent of the population is protected against severe forms of the disease. Two years after the outbreak of COVID-19, the Danish strategy enjoys broad support at home. The Danish Health Authority currently "recommends” those who test positive to isolate for four days, while contact cases no longer need to quarantine. Facemasks and the COVID pass are also recommended for hospital visits.
The WHO also warned yesterday that the vast amount of waste produced in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic posed a threat to human and environmental health. The tens of thousands of tons of extra medical waste had put a huge strain on healthcare waste management systems, the WHO said in a report. The extra waste is "threatening human and environmental health and exposing a dire need to improve waste management practices”, the UN health agency said.
As countries scrambled to get personal protective equipment (PPE) to cope with the crisis, less attention was paid to disposing of COVID-19 healthcare waste safely and sustainably, the WHO said. The report looked at the 1.5 billion units - approximately 87,000 tons - of PPE procured between March 2020 and Nov 2021, and shipped out to countries via the United Nations system - a small fraction of the global total.
Most of this equipment has likely ended up as waste, the WHO said. Furthermore, over 140 million test kits have been shipped, with the potential to generate 2,600 tons of mainly plastic, non-infectious waste and 731,000 liters of chemical waste. Approximately 97 percent of plastic waste from tests is incinerated, the report said. And the first eight billion COVID-19 vaccine doses administered globally produced 144,000 tons of additional waste such as syringes, needles and safety boxes.
The WHO does not recommend using gloves for vaccine injections but the report said it appeared to be common practice. Gloves, in terms of volume, constitute the greatest proportion of PPE waste of all items procured by the UN, the report said. The 71-page report warned that safe management services for healthcare waste were lacking even before the pandemic added further pressures.
The report recommended practical solutions, such as using PPE more rationally; using less packaging; developing reusable PPE; using PPE made with biodegradable materials; investing in non-burn waste treatment technology; centralizing waste management; and investing in local PPE production. "Addressing environmental concerns does not necessitate compromising on safety,” it said. - Agencies