The WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is in Switzerland for a news conference on July 3, 2020 regarding the COVID-19 outbreak.
The World Health Organization is urging the public to practice Covid mitigation tactics regardless of their vaccination status as cases surge across Europe heading into the holiday season.
Some countries and communities have been lured into a false sense of security that the vaccine is fully protected against Covid, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters during an update Wednesday.
He noted that Covid vaccines can still be contracted and spread if social mixing returns to pre-pandemic levels.
Tedros said to take precautions to prevent becoming infectious and to infecting someone else who could die. It means wearing a mask, avoiding crowds and meeting others outside, or in a well-ventilated space inside.
Tedros said Europe was the epicenter of the epidemic, with unsustainable pressure on both health-care systems and personnel. Europe accounted for over half of the world's total new Covid cases during the week ended Nov. 21 with more than 2.4 million infections, an increase from the previous seven days, according to the WHO's most recent weekly epidemiological update.
The WHO office covering Europe and Central Asia said Tuesday that the regions have surpassed a combined 1.5 million Covid deaths and could suffer hundreds of thousands of more deaths by the end of the year. Over the next four months, the organization expects intensive care units in 49 of the region's 53 countries to experience high or extreme stress.
The WHO's Health Emergencies Program's executive director said that governments are rolling back public health measures.
In Europe, even in the midst of a very, very strong resurgence in cases, and even in the midst of some of those countries under huge pressure in their health systems, we are seeing pre-pandemic levels of social mixing, gathering and many other things. The virus will continue to transmit in that environment.
Tedros said that "no country or region is out of the woods" yet, despite the majority of reported Covid cases being in Europe. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on Covid, said that expanding vaccination coverage, wearing masks, and improving ventilation indoors can help drive down Covid transmission.
More than 95,000 new covid infections are reported daily in the U.S., according to data from the University. The average number of people dying from the H1N1 virus in the US is more than 1,100.
Over the past week, the number of Americans hospitalized with Covid-19 has increased by 7%.
The former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration told CNBC that more people are contracting the virus than they realize due to weak monitoring of breakthrough infections in the U.S.
Gottlieb said that people who are out a significant portion of time from their original vaccine are the most likely to get a breakthrough infections. We are not doing a good job of tracking this in real time, even though retrospective studies will identify this. He said that this is the reason for people to get boosters.
Pfizer and Moderna were cleared by the U.S. on Friday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cleared Johnson & Johnson boosters. People in poorer countries have very limited access to vaccines, which is why the WHO has criticized the distribution of boosters.
The Netherlands entered a partial lockdown on Saturday, while Austria's fourth full Covid lockdown began on Monday. The country's seven-day new case average reached a record high of more than 53,100 per day on Tuesday, up 29% from the week before, according to a CNBC analysis.
The White House said that the Biden administration has no plans for a lockdown, pointing to rising vaccination rates and new therapeutic treatments that are coming online. Paxlovid, a Pfizer treatment pill, demonstrated high efficacy in preventing hospitalizations during a clinical trial.
The White House can curb the spread of the coronaviruses without shutting down the economy. More and more people are getting vaccinations each week.
