While the vaccine pass comes into effect on Monday in France, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that the end of the acute phase of the pandemic may be within reach this year.
"We can end Covid-19 as a global health emergency", WHO's highest level of alert, said its director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on the occasion of the opening of the Committee. Executive of the WHO, which is meeting this week in Geneva.
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But “to achieve this, countries must not sit idly by and must, among other things, fight against vaccine inequity, monitor the virus and its variants and take appropriate restriction measures,” he explained.
However, “in Africa, 85% of the population has not yet received a single dose of vaccine”, he further underlined.
The latest variant?
It is nevertheless dangerous "to speak of the endgame", estimated Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and to believe that the Omicron variant will be the last.
The potential for a "more transmissible and more lethal" variant is indeed "very real", according to him, because the conditions are "ideal" currently in the world for other variants to emerge.
The WHO estimates that Omicron could have infected 60% of the European population by March.
On Sunday, WHO Europe director Hans Kluge estimated that an exit from the Covid-19 pandemic could be looming in the region two years after the appearance of this disease on the continent, in an interview with AFP. , in which he however called for caution because of the versatility of the virus.
In a statement released on Monday, Hans Kluge stressed that "Omicron is supplanting Delta at unprecedented speed" in Europe.
“Less than two months after its discovery in South Africa, it now accounts for 31.8% of cases in the European region, compared to 15% the previous week,” he added.
Easing of restrictions
France is now the European country with the highest incidence, excluding micro-states.
This is 3,733 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last seven days, according to an AFP count.
The country recorded an average of 360,000 daily cases over the same period, which also makes it the most affected European country in absolute terms.
A decline nevertheless seems to be looming and the government has nevertheless announced the end of wearing a mask outdoors and compulsory teleworking on February 2, then the reopening of nightclubs and the return of consumption at the counter on February 16.
In China, the long confinement of the city of Xi'an (north) was lifted on Monday, announced the authorities, who also reported 72 cases of Covid among participants in the Beijing Olympics.
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The 13 million inhabitants of the ancient imperial capital had been confined to their homes on December 22 after the discovery of an outbreak which infected a total of more than 2,100 people.
This month-long confinement is the longest and most extensive imposed in China since the quarantine of the metropolis of Wuhan, the first epicenter of the pandemic, from January to April 2020.
The official number of contaminations remains minimal in China compared to the rest of the world, but the authorities react to the slightest resurgence of the epidemic with radical measures, which are reinforced with the approach of the Beijing Olympics (February 4 to 20).