Fresh Covid wave fears persist
throughout the world, including in India, as Covid infections are once again
growing in a number of nations, particularly in China, which recorded over 250
million cases in only 20 days in December.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 18.3% of Covid-19 cases in the US are caused by the Omicron subvariant XBB, whereas the BF.7 variant of the Omicron virus is a matter for worry in China and India (CDC). This is an increase of 11.2% as incidences of the XBB variant rise in Singapore. In the US, new instances of the Omicron subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounted for almost 70% of all cases.
According to data from Johns
Hopkins University, since the pandemic began almost three years ago, there have
been more than 100 million verified cases of Covid in the US, resulting in more
than 1 million fatalities.
Japan is currently dealing with
the ninth wave of the pandemic, and 206,943 new cases have been reported there.
On Saturday, new
coronavirus-related mortality reached a three-month high while South Korea's
new Covid cases stayed below 70,000 for the second straight day.
The head of the World Health
Organization (WHO) expressed his hope that by the end of the following year,
Covid-19 will no longer be a global health emergency.
The head of the World Health
Organization (WHO) expressed his hope that by the end of the following year,
Covid-19 will no longer be a global health emergency.
The conditions for announcing the
end of the Covid-19 emergency will be discussed by the WHO Covid-19 Emergency
Committee next month, according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus.
He added that while the
SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic, will not go away,
"we're confident that at some point next year, we will be able to claim
that Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency."
According to Kirti Sabnis, an
infectious disease specialist at Fortis Hospital in Kalyan, Mumbai, when a
pandemic turns endemic, the illness is widespread or present in a specific
population.
"Additionally, the illnesses
may still have an impact on weak members of the community. An endemic may not
have significant outbreaks, but this also indicates that it won't be entirely
eliminated "She spoke.
Because Covid-19 is a respiratory
virus that mutates frequently, much like other Influenza viruses, experts in
health stated it is more difficult to forecast whether it would become endemic
in 2023.
