RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom has reported that the global number of covid-19 cases has decreased for the fourth straight week over the past seven days. According to him, this is a result of restrictions imposed by countries and the progress of vaccination. “It is not yet time to relax protective measures,” he said over a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
The W.H.O. has further stated that studies conducted to date do not suggest a lower vaccine protection against severe cases of the new strains detected.
A cause for concern worldwide for allegedly being more contagious, the sars-cov-2 strains that emerged in countries like Brazil and South Africa should not cause ‘panic’, according to W.H.O.’s chief scientist Sumya Swaminathan, as new strains are constantly emerging in a virus’ natural evolution. She further reiterated that studies conducted to date do not suggest a lower vaccine protection against severe cases of the new strains detected.
Origin
The report by the team of scientists who traveled to Wuhan, China, to determine the origin of sars-cov-2 will be released within a few weeks, with a summary of their findings coming out as early as next week, Tedros announced. According to him, ‘some questions have been raised and others discarded’ and ‘all assumptions on the origin of the virus are still open’.
The head of the mission convened by the W.H.O. and in charge of the organization’s Food Safety and Zoonoses area, Peter Benembarek, described the trip as successful. He also reiterated that, according to the team’s findings, novel coronavirus outbreaks are unlikely to have occurred in Wuhan or nearby regions before December 2019, when the first cases of the disease were reported by the Chinese government.