Covid-19: WHO expecting 100M cases by January end

Geneva - Vaccines have potential to bring pandemic under control, Tedros says.

By IANS

Published: Fri 22 Jan 2021, 3:49 PM

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), said that the global Covid-19 caseload is expected to hit 100 million by the end of January, but vaccines have the potential to bring the pandemic under control.

In his address to the extraordinary meeting of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization, Tedros said on Thursday that more than two million people have died from Covid-19 worldwide, and by the end of this month, "we expect to reach 100 million reported cases", reports Xinhua news agency.

However, Covid-19 vaccines have the potential to bring the pandemic under control, and the development and approval of safe and effective vaccines less than a year after the emergence of a new virus is a "stunning scientific achievement, and a much-needed source of hope", he noted.

Covid-19 vaccination is now underway in more than 50 countries, said Tedros, yet all but two of them are high- or upper-middle income countries.

"We must work together as one global family to ensure the urgent and equitable rollout of vaccines," he said.

The WHO chief also stressed that vaccines complement rather than replace fundamental public health measures that individuals, communities and governments must take to stop the spread of Covid-19, which is especially important in the face of rapidly-spreading variants.

The total number of global coronavirus cases has topped 97.4 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 2.08 million, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

In its latest update on Friday morning, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed that the current global caseload and death toll stood at 97,460,188 and 2,088,392, respectively.

The US is the worst-hit country with the world's highest number of cases and deaths at 24,619,597 and 409,877, respectively, according to the CSSE.