The World Health Organisation is pushing for an international accord to help prevent and fight future pandemics after the emergence of the worrying new Omicron COVID-19 variant.<\/p>\n
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says many uncertainties remain about just how transmissible and severe infection by the highly mutated Omicron might be.<\/p>\n
Dr Tedros joined leaders like outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chilean President Sebastian Pinera for a long-planned and largely virtual special session of the UN health agency\u2019s member states at the World Health Assembly.<\/p>\n
The gathering is aimed at devising a global action plan toward preventing, preparing and responding to future pandemics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe emergence of the highly mutated Omicron variant underlines just how perilous and precarious our situation is,\u201d said Dr Tedros, calling for a \u201clegally binding\u201d agreement that wasn\u2019t mentioned in a draft text seeking consensus on the way forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndeed, Omicron demonstrates just why the world needs a new accord on pandemics.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur current system disincentivises countries from alerting others to threats that will inevitably land on their shores,\u201d he said, saying that South Africa and Botswana \u2013 where the new variant was detected in southern Africa \u2013 should be praised and not \u201cpenalised\u201d for their work.<\/p>\n
That was an allusion to restrictions announced by many countries on air travel to and from the region.<\/p>\n
Dr Tedros said WHO scientists and others around the world were working urgently to decipher the threat posed by the new variant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t yet know whether Omicron is associated with more transmission, more severe disease, more risk of infections, or more risk of evading vaccines,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The world should now be \u201cwide awake\u201d to the threat of the coronavirus, \u201cbut Omicron\u2019s very emergence is another reminder that although many of us might think we are done with COVID-19, it\u2019s not done with us,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
A draft resolution set to be adopted by the World Health Assembly stops short of calling for work toward specifically establishing a \u201cpandemic treaty\u201d or \u201clegally binding instrument\u201d sought by some, which could beef up the international response when \u2013 not if \u2013 a new pandemic erupts.<\/p>\n
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose 16-year tenure is likely to end next week, called for \u201creliable financing\u201d for WHO and increased contributions to the UN agency from its member states \u2013 while alluding to the EU position in favour of a binding agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe catastrophic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of health and the economy ought to be a lesson to us,\u201d she said by video message.<\/p>\n
\u201cViruses know no national borders. That\u2019s precisely why we should lay down measures to be taken to improve prevention, early detection, and response in internationally binding fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The World Health Organisation is pushing for an international accord to help prevent and fight future pandemics after the emergence of the worrying new Omicron COVID-19 variant. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says many uncertainties remain about just how transmissible and severe infection by the highly mutated Omicron might be. Dr Tedros joined leaders like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-world"],"views":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3918,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions\/3918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldinsight.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}