After two years of relentless pandemic challenges, the World Health Organization says the year 2022 could see an end to the acute stage of COVID-19.
While expressing this optimism, WHO made a fresh call for the world countries to hit the goal of vaccinating at least 70 percent of their populations by the middle of the year 2022.
Since the coronavirus outbreak in China two years ago, COVID-19 disease has killed 1.8 million people in 2020 and 3.5 million in 2021 as per recorded deaths. But the UN says the actual toll is likely to be much higher.
Besides, millions of people dealing with long-term consequences from the virus including loss of health, economic opportunity, and psychological effects of the pandemic that has altered lives dramatically.
Thanks to medical researchers and their supporters, the world has now some tools to fight the invisible enemy with vaccines being the most critical among them. The arrival of a COVID pill in the United States has also raised hopes of reigning in the virus
Experts also opine that the virus might become seasonal like the flu, which claims thousands of lives in the U.S. every year.
While reporting this a CNBC report cited experts Wednesday as contemplating the COVID will likely cease to be a pandemic sometime in 2022 as more and more people are expected to have access to vaccines and antiviral COVID pills.
Meanwhile, the latest version of the virus the Omicron has spread alarmingly but it is less lethal compared to the Delta variant.
In the United States, average COVID-19 cases rocketed to 280,000 this week, the highest according to the Johns Hopkins University’s count.
But there is no guarantee what the future variants might look like.
In such a scenario, vaccines appear to be the best answer to the ongoing crisis.
Yet, there are several challenges that remain in the way of vaccine availability around the world.
This year, during meetings of the world’s biggest economies – the G7 and G20 – WHO had challenged leaders to vaccinate 40 percent of their populations by the end of 2021 and 70 percent by the middle of 2022.
But 92 out of 194 member states missed the target, according to the World Health Organization.
“Forty percent was doable. It’s not only a moral shame, it cost lives and provided the virus with opportunities to circulate unchecked and mutate,” Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said.
The WHO chief warned that boosters in rich countries could cause low-income countries to again fall short and called on leaders of wealthy countries and manufacturers to work together to reach the 70 percent goal by July.
“This is the time to rise above short-term nationalism and protect populations and economies against future variants by ending global vaccine inequity”, he said.
“We have 185 days to the finish line of achieving 70 percent by the start of July 2022. And the clock starts now”.
[…] 2022 could see the end of COVID’s acute phase […]