World Health Organization (File Photo)
Geneva, Jan 26: A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official warned of the risk of continued transmission of the novel coronavirus even after large-scale vaccinations in the foreseeable future.
Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, told a virtual press conference on Monday that he doesn t believe the world should start setting elimination or eradication of this virus as the bar for success. That is not the bar for success. The bar for success is reducing the capacity of this virus to kill, to put people in hospital, to destroy our economic and social lives, Xinhua news agency quoted Ryan as saying.
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There was confusion tonight about how deadly the Kent coronavirus variant really is after 10 SAGE studies came to wildly different conclusions about its lethality and the World Health Organization said it still hadn t seen any convincing data.
Boris Johnson and his science chiefs tonight made the shocking claim that the strain called B.1.1.7 could be 30 per cent more deadly than older versions of the virus without presenting any evidence to back up the terrifying development.
The announcement came after 10 studies submitted to SAGE overwhelmingly suggested that the strain was more lethal than past variants. But there are question marks over the findings because the estimates varied vastly and one study even found the strain was less deadly than the older version.
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The mission of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme (WHE) is to build the capacity of Member States in the South-East Asia Region, to manage health emergency risks and, when national capacities are overwhelmed, to lead and coordinate the international health response to contain outbreaks and to provide effective relief and recovery to affected populations. The Emergency Operations Unit of WHE is responsible for ensuring that emergency-affected populations have access to timely and effective health services. This includes ensuring a strong emergency management system (based on incident management), effective and inclusive coordination mechanisms, joint assessments and planning of the response with partners, implementation of operations and services according to agreed standards, and strong logistics and operational support. The expansion and strengthening of operational partnerships is a key priority. EMO also leads on humanitarian policy and gui