The director-general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed his confidence on Friday that the COVID-19 pandemic will come to an end in 2023. During a media briefing in Geneva, Dr. Ghebreyesus highlighted that the weekly number of reported deaths has been lower than it was before the pandemic was declared in March 2020. He further mentioned that the global weekly deaths currently stand at 5,048, representing a 26% decrease from the prior week, while weekly cases of COVID-19 have dropped by 21.65% over the previous week to 812,255 globally. Despite these promising figures, the WHO is not yet ready to announce the end of the pandemic.
Ghebreyesus also stressed the importance of understanding the origin of the pandemic and called on China to be transparent in sharing data to achieve this goal. He noted that information from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, relating to samples taken at the Huanan market in Wuhan in 2020, could have been shared three years ago.