Covid remains a global threat – with 10,000 deaths a month and hospitalisations up 42%, WHO warns
THOUGH Covid is no longer the “global health emergency” it was four years ago, it still remains a threat, the World Health Organisation said.
The global health watchdog warned that the virus killed almost 10,000 people in December alone, according to reports it received.
Meanwhile, Covid-19 hospitalisations jumped by 42 per cent in the same month and intensive care admissions increased by 62 per cent compared to November.
“The virus is still circulating, changing, and killing,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated during a media briefing on January 10.
“Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable death is not acceptable,” he added.
“Data from various sources indicate increasing transmission during December, fuelled by gatherings over the holiday period,” Dr Tedros said.
The JN.1 variant – an offshoot of the highly transmissible Omicron – is also behind the jump in cases, becoming “the most-commonly reported variant globally”, he added.
Recent data from COG-UK showed that JN.1 bug accounted for 65 per cent of all cases in the UK.
Dr Tedros noted that the figures showing a rise in Covid cases were based on data from less than 50 countries, mostly in Europe and the Americas.
“It is certain that there are also increases in other countries that are not being reported,” the health chief said.
He called on both governments and individuals to continue taking precautions against Covid-19, just as they do with other diseases.
“We continue to call on governments to maintain surveillance and sequencing, and to ensure access to affordable and reliable tests, treatments and vaccines for their populations,” Dr Tedros said.
“And we continue to call on individuals to be vaccinated, to test, to wear masks where needed and to ensure crowded indoor spaces are well ventilated.”
Professor Peter Openshaw, a virus expert at Imperial College London, recently warned that the JN.1 Covid wave sweeping the UK could be the “biggest yet”.
He told Sun Health: “We’re going to see quite a major surge in infections over the coming weeks – the wave could be bigger than anything we’ve seen before.”
He urged Brits who haven’t had a Covid booster to consider wearing masks in public spaces to stop the spread.
Hospital admissions of people testing positive for Covid-19 stood at 5.2 per 100,000 people in the week to December 31, up from 4.8 the previous week and the fifth weekly rise in a row.
But a report by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) suggested that Covid rates in England and Scotland “showed early signs of decreasing in the two weeks leading up to January 3”.
It estimated that 3.2 per cent of people in England had been infected by the virus in that time period, which is equivalent to 1,737,000 individuals.
As for Scotland, UKHSA estimated that 2.8 per cent of the population – some 147,000 people – had tested positive for Covid.
“There were early signs of a decrease in prevalence across all age groups in the two weeks up to January 3 2024,” the agency said, after case numbers peeked during Christmastime.