Thunder Bay – COVID-19 Update – Across the globe, COVID-19 numbers are spiking.
Today, December 29, 2021, the World Health Organization has provided an update.
Two years ago, as people gathered for New Year’s Eve celebrations, a new global threat emerged.
WHO’s health emergency system immediately swung into action, establishing an Incident Management Support Team, to run the emergency response and requesting more information about the reports of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown origin in Wuhan, China.
Although we had little information, we had enough experience and expertise to know that this looked serious.
Early on we worked out that beating this new health threat – a new coronavirus potentially capable of spreading quickly around the globe – would require three things.
Science to both understand the pathogen and find solutions to beating it, and solidarity to share and deliver those tools wisely and equitably.
Science. Solutions. Solidarity.
And there were major successes.
This includes the rapid development of a comprehensive package of technical guidance on how to ready countries to detect, treat, communicate, and prevent the spread, within two weeks of the first report of the cluster of pneumonia of unknown cause.
The sharing of the genome, which triggered the development of diagnostics within the first three weeks of 2020.
A multi-organisational supply chain system was quickly set up, which included solidarity flights, that collectively delivered personal protective equipment for health workers and medical and oxygen supplies for patients.
WHO quickly convened scientists and researchers in January 2020, and regularly thereafter, to develop a research roadmap for COVID-19 that accelerated the science around the virus and the creation of new health tools.
This included global solidarity trials on new vaccines and treatments to speed up research and development processes.
And WHO and partners created the COVID-19 Tools (Act) Accelerator in April 2020 to accelerate access to tests, treatments and vaccines.
We deployed emergency response teams to support governments in their times of greatest need.
Working with clinicians and practitioners around the world, WHO developed a comprehensive living guidance for the clinical management of COVID-19.
A common corticoid steroid was found to be effective in cutting the risk of death in those with severe disease in September 2020.
The development of new vaccines proved so effective at cutting serious disease and death – they represent a scientific masterclass.
The increased level of coordination between WHO and Member States is exemplified by more than 3,500 national regulatory authorizations in 144 Member States, following the approval of vaccines through the WHO Emergency Use Listing.
Global Cases
Great Britain has reported 183,037 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase on record, including small backlog.
France reports at least 208,000 new coronavirus cases.
Greece reports 21,657 new coronavirus cases, by far the biggest one-day increase on record.