The World Health Organization (WHO) reported this Wednesday that the number of new cases of Covid-19 globally down 13 percent in the last week. The figure implies a reduction in infections for the third consecutive week.
Compared to the 5 million infected weekly that were registered at the beginning of the year, in recent days, WHO received notifications for 3.7 million new cases.
According to these figures, people infected with coronavirus throughout the world amount to 103 million, while deaths from this disease exceed 2 million 200 thousand.
“Transmission has dropped in many countries, but we must not forget how we got to this, the price we have paid,” said the head of the organization’s anticovid technical department, Maria von Kerkhove, in an informative talk through social networks.
The expert asked not to generate excessive optimism regarding the relative improvement in the global figures of the pandemic and urged not to make the mistake of lifting the restrictions imposed to control the transmission of the coronavirus too quickly.
Von Kerkhove explained that the resumption of economic, social or sports activities must be done “slowly, in a controlled manner and taking decisions based on science”. “This is not a matter of days, but of weeks or months,” he added.
For his part, the director of the WHO Health Emergencies Department, Mike Ryan, he recalled that it has been shown that when the population regains some mobility and social relations are resumed in an unrestricted way, the cases of Covid-19 multiply again. In that sense, he indicated that “for now we must avoid “relaxing the restrictions to fight the virus.
“This will allow the vaccines – wherever they are being administered – to take effect and allow the coronavirus and its variants to be brought under control,” he said.
The WHO also asked scientists from around the world to establish a common nomenclature to assign neutral names to the mutations that appear, which until now are identified according to the place where they are detected, such as the British, South African or Brazilian variants.
According to Von Kerkhove, this method stigmatizes countries that, in fact, “have done a good job of sequencing the virus” and quickly informed the rest of the world when they detected a change, which is essential to establish if their modes of transmission or severity change. .
One of the possibilities is to apply the system used for hurricanes, which establishes annual lists with names that are used in alphabetical order.
