The World Health Organization (WHO) will meet this week to assess whether Covid-19 is officially moving out of the pandemic phase.
"Almost three years on from declaring a public emergency of international concern, our highest level of alert, this week the emergency committee on Covid-19 will discuss whether the current situation still constitutes a global emergency," WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
He noted, however, some countries still face a high level of crisis, with limited access to vaccines and anti-viral treatment.
"In the last eight weeks, more than 170,000 people have died of Covid-19. That’s just reported deaths, the actual number of deaths is much higher," Ghebreyesus added,
Tedros urged countries to continue with vaccination and booster vaccine campaigns. “While we’re clearly in better shape than three years ago when this pandemic hit, the collective global response is once again under strain,” he warned.
Earlier, Vestnik Kavkaza reported that Russia recorded 4,702 coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours.
