Covid infections rate is approaching the highest levels, WHO chief warns

April 19, 2021: On Friday, the World Health Organization head said an alarming trend of increasing Covid cases results in global infections now approaching their highest level since the pandemic began.
“Around the world, cases and deaths are increasing at worrying rates,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing focused on Papua New Guinea and the western Pacific region.
“The number of new cases per week has doubled from the past two months globally. This is approaching the highest rate of infections that we have seen so far during the pandemic,” he added.
“Some countries that had previously avoided widespread transmission are now seeing steep increases in infections,” Tedros said, citing Papua New Guinea. Tedros said the United Nations health agency would continue to assess the evolution of the coronavirus crisis and “adjust advice accordingly.”
Under international health regulations, Tedros said WHO’s emergency committee convened on Thursday, and he expected to receive their advice on Monday. To date, more than 139 million Covid cases have been reported worldwide, with 2.9 million deaths, according to data by Johns Hopkins University.
The WHO has said it hopes the initiative will be able to catch up in the coming months but has condemned what it describes as a “shocking imbalance” in distributing vaccines between high-income and low-income countries. The health agency has also criticized countries that have sought their vaccine deals outside of the COVAX initiative for political or commercial reasons.
At the start of the year, the WHO’s Tedros had warned the world was on the brink of a “catastrophic moral failure” over vaccine inequality. He said a “me-first approach” to vaccines would leave the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people at risk, adding the approach was “self-defeating” since it would encourage hoarding and likely prolong the health crisis.