The World Health Organization is warning that global Covid cases could pass 300 million by early next year if the pandemic continues in its current direction, calling on world leaders to slow the spread by providing more testing supplies, treatments and vaccines to poorer nations, CNBC reports.
The projection came just a week after the WHO reported 200 million Covid cases worldwide and six months after the globe surpassed 100 million cases, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing Wednesday. With four variants of concern on the WHO’s radar — including the surging, highly transmissible delta variant — Tedros said the total amount of unreported Covid cases makes the real tally “much higher” than what’s reported.
“Whether we reach 300 million and how fast we get there depends on all of us,” Tedros said.
WHO officials expressed an urgent need Tuesday for $7.7 billion in funding to help distribute vaccines, oxygen and medical care in low-income countries. Tedros echoed the push for supplies on Wednesday, requesting properly trained health-care workers and increased treatment options for patients “at all ends of the clinical spectrum, from mild to severe disease.”
“We are all in this together,” he said. “But the world is not acting like it.”
