“2022 must be the year when we end COVID pandemic” says WHO Director-General

Director general of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, highlighted, “2022 must be the year when the COVID-19 outbreak ends“. The WHO Director-General made the remark during a press conference in Geneva while asking the world leaders to take stringent measures to defeat the contagious COVID-19 virus. 

He added, “All of us want to spend time with our beloved friends & family. Every one of us want to get back to normalcy, and in order to do so, we need to safeguard ourselves now as cases, fuelled by the fast-spreading Omicron variant, surge”. 

Highlighting the individual responsibility, the international organization furthermore asked the general public to strictly abide by the COVID-19 protocols and measures as the festive season approaches. 

While underscoring the rapidly increasing COVID-19 cases, the Director-general added that it is better to cancel plans now and celebrate later than to celebrate now and grieve later, adding, “We have to focus now on ending this COVID-19 pandemic“. 

He said that getting vaccinated, wearing masks, maintaining physical distancing and sanitizing frequently are the few tools to dispose of the viral disease. 

“If we are to end the COVID-19 pandemic in the coming year, we must end inequity,” the Director-General added. 

Apart from this, he outlined that more than 80 countries now have the newly emerged COVID-19 variant – ‘Omicron’, which crushed the hopes of the outbreak’s end. Meanwhile, he added that the Omicron is not more severe than the Delta variant, which is still the dominant strain. 

As per the data revealed earlier, it was estimated that Omicron would be more deadliest and transmissible than the Delta variant and reduce the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, engraving fear in the minds of people. 

WHO named Omicron as the ‘variant of concern‘. Several companies are at present also working to develop a vaccine for the new variant.