Cases of COVID-19 are increasing worldwide as the highly transmissible BA.5 subvariant of Omicron spreads at a “very intense level”, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.
At a news conference on Tuesday, the WHO chief said that sub-variants of Omicron, such as BA.4 and BA.5, continue to cause waves of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths around the world.
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“The virus is spreading freely and countries are not effectively dealing with the burden of the disease,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom said at a virtual news conference from Geneva, Switzerland.
“New waves of the virus demonstrate once again that COVID-19 is far from over,” he added.
The spread of BA.5, which is now the dominant version of the virus globally, is a concern because it has a growth advantage over other Omicron sublines, said WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove.
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“The virus is spreading at a very intense level globally and our ability to detect cases has been reduced as surveillance strategies have changed,” she told reporters.
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The WHO has seen a significant increase in reports of BA.5 cases in just the past four weeks, Van Kerkhove said, adding that the trend is expected to continue worldwide.
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The agency is also aware of reports of reinfection, but has no details on the sublines.
WHO began tracking BA.4 and BA.5 in mid-April. These were first discovered in January 2022 and are in addition to the previously discovered BA.1 and BA.2 sub-variants of the Omicron.
Meanwhile, the International COVID-19 Emergency Committee met on Friday and concluded that COVID-19 remains a public health emergency of international concern.
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In a statement on Tuesday, the commission, made up of independent experts, said rising cases, the continued evolution of the virus and pressure on health services in a number of countries meant the situation was still an emergency.
Read more: 17 million Canadians received Omicron in 5 months, new federal report says
Cases of COVID-19 reported to the WHO have risen by 30 percent in the past two weeks, although increased population immunity, largely from vaccines, has seen cases “decoupling” from hospitalizations and deaths, it said. the statement of the commission.
The Public Health Agency of Canada predicts more cases in the coming months due to increases in Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 sublines, according to its June 30 statement.
Some sobering numbers from the Canadian COVID-19 Immunity Task Force released last week showed how quickly the Omicron variant of COVID-19 and its sub-variants spread across the country in late 2021 and the first few months of this year.
An analysis of blood test data suggests 17 million Canadians were infected in just five months, between December 2021 and May 2022.
— with files from Tim Sargent of Global News and Reuters
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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