The COVID-19 pandemic is most certainly not over, the head of the World Health Organisation warned. Lets not lower our guard. Stay protected and follow rules is his call. WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that declining testing and sequencing means we are blinding ourselves to the evolution of the virus. He also noted that almost 1 billion people in lower-income countries still haven’t been vaccinated. While the world’s vaccine supply has improved, there is insufficient political commitment to roll out vaccines in some countries, gaps in operational or financial capacity in others, he said.In all, we see vaccine hesitancy driven by misinformation and disinformation, Tedros said. The pandemic will not magically disappear, but we can end it.
Fears of Monkeypox is also rising. Cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in the UK, Portugal, Sweden, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, the US, Canada and Australia. Monkeypox is less deadly than smallpox, with a mortality rate below 4 per cent, but experts are worried about the unusual spread of the disease beyond Africa where it usually circulates. Brussels: Belgium has become the first country to make the 21-day quarantine compulsory for the monkeypox patients after four cases of the disease have been reported last week.