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WHO / COVID-19 UPDATE
STORY: WHO / COVID-19 UPDATE
TRT: 06:05
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 12 NOVEMBER 2021, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / FILE
1. Wide shot, press briefing room
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO):
"This virus will continue to evolve and threaten our health systems if we don’t improve the collective response. Right now, Delta and Omicron are twin threats that are driving up cases to record numbers, which again is leading to spikes in hospitalizations and deaths. I am highly concerned that Omicron being more transmissible, circulating at the same time as Delta - is leading to a tsunami of cases."
3. Wide shot, press briefing room
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO):
"The pressure on health systems is not only because of new COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization but also a large number of health workers are getting sick themselves. The unvaccinated are many times more at risk of dying from either variant. Omicron is moving so quickly, in addition to vaccination, public health social measures are also needed to stem the wave of infection, protect health workers and systems, open up societies and keep children in school."
5. Wide shot, press briefing room
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO):
"In the year ahead, I call for leaders of government and industry to walk the talk on vaccine equity both by ensuring consistent supply and helping to get vaccinations actually into people."
7. Wide shot, press briefing room
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO):
"This is the moment for leaders to banish the politics of populism and self-interest, which are derailing the COVID-19 response and threaten to undermine the response to the inevitable next disease X. While 2021 has been hard, I ask everyone to make a New Year’s resolution to get behind the campaign to vaccinate 70 percent by the middle of 2022. We have 185 days to the finish line of achieving 70 percent by the start of July 2022. And the clock starts now. If we drive this campaign together, we’ll all be in a much better place by this time next year."
9. Wide shot, press briefing room
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
"With regards to the pandemic, we've 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, that 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 that is the end game here, but we're certainly not there yet. This is going to be a bumpy road on the way to low levels of COVID."
11. Wide shot, press briefing room
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Mike Ryan, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
"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're seeing in early Omicron data. It's less severe. Maybe it's not. It's more transmissible. Maybe it is. But we have to wait and see. The vaccines work or they don't work. We have to wait and see. And I think it would be advisable at this point if we don't see huge shifts, huge moves in reducing our control measures for COVID-19, purely on the basis of initial or preliminary studies."
13. Wide shot, press briefing room
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist, World Health Organization (WHO):
"The evidence of Omicron is just emerging, and I think it would be very premature to conclude definitively. But I think what we can say is that all of the lab studies are pointing towards a reduction in neutralization capacity (of COVID-19 vaccines) and also what we see clinically is that people who have been vaccinated, people who've had prior infections, are still getting breakthrough infections with Omicron. And that's why the numbers that we see around the world today are extremely high because these infections are occurring in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated people. However, it appears that vaccines are proving to still protect because even though the numbers are going up exponentially in many countries, hospitalizations and even within hospitalized people, the need for ventilation, the need for critical care doesn't seem to be going up proportionally."
15. Wide shot, press briefing room
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Janet Diaz, Lead, Clinical Management Response COVID-19, World Health Organization (WHO):
"It is too early right now, and we still must be cautious when trying to ascertain the severity of Omicron virus infection. We do know that there are some suggestions of the reduced hospitalization coming from some countries, as was already discussed, but we need to know also of those hospitalized how many are on oxygen therapy, how many are requiring intensive care or mechanical ventilation, and how many are dying. So, we do need to get a better understanding of that spectrum of severe disease in patients infected with Omicron. So, what do we need? We need more data. We need robust analysis. And this is a call on countries that are experiencing the co-threat of Omicron and Delta."
17. Wide shot, press briefing room
The Head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus today (29 Dec) said, "Delta and Omicron are twin threats that” are “leading to a tsunami of cases."
The UN health agency chief noted that "the pressure on health systems is not only because of new COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization but also a large number of health workers are getting sick themselves.”
He stressed that “the unvaccinated are many times more at risk of dying from either variant.”
Tedros, briefing journalists from Geneva, called for leaders of government and industry “to walk the talk on vaccine equity both by ensuring consistent supply and helping to get vaccinations actually into people."
He said, "this is the moment for leaders to banish the politics of populism and self-interest,” and asked, “everyone to make a New Year’s resolution to get behind the campaign to vaccinate 70 percent by the middle of 2022.”
Earlier in the year, during meetings of the world’s biggest economies – the G7 and G20 – WHO challenged leaders to vaccinate 40 percent of their populations by the end of 2021 and 70 percent by the middle of 2022.
With only a couple of days left in the year, 92 out of 194 Member States missed the target.
Also briefing journalists, WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme Executive Director, Dr Mike Ryan said the acute phase of the pandemic, “can end in 2022.”
Ryan said, “the virus itself is very unlikely to go away completely,” and added, “we hope that that is the end game here, but we're certainly not there yet.”
He said, “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're seeing in early Omicron data. It's less severe. Maybe it's not. It's more transmissible. Maybe it is. But we have to wait and see.”
WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said, “all of the lab studies are pointing towards a reduction in neutralization capacity (of COVID-19 vaccines) and also what we see clinically is that people who have been vaccinated, people who've had prior infections, are still getting breakthrough infections with Omicron.”
She said, “infections are occurring in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated people. However, it appears that vaccines are proving to still protect because even though the numbers are going up exponentially in many countries, hospitalizations and even within hospitalized people, the need for ventilation, the need for critical care doesn't seem to be going up proportionally."
For her part, Dr Janet Diaz, who is WHO’s Lead in Clinical Management Response to COVID-19, said, “we do need to get a better understanding of that spectrum of severe disease in patients infected with Omicron. So, what do we need? We need more data. We need robust analysis. And this is a call on countries that are experiencing the co-threat of Omicron and Delta."
1.8 million deaths were recorded in 2020 and 3.5 million in 2021, but the actual number is much higher. There are also millions of people dealing with long-term consequences from the virus.
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