The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said high COVID-19 deaths and hospitalisations might end this year but the coronavirus itself is very unlikely to go away completely.
In a recent statement, WHO chief of emergencies, Mike Ryan, urged governments to continue enforcing public health measures set to control the spread of the virus.
He said:
“With regards to the pandemic, we have been saying this for a very long time. The acute phase of the pandemic, the pandemic that’s been associated with the tragedy of deaths and hospitalisations can end in 2022.
“The virus itself is very unlikely to go away completely and will probably settle down into a pattern of transmission, low level causing occasional outbreaks in under-vaccinated populations.
“And we hope that is the end game, but we are not there yet. This is going to be a bumpy road on the way to low levels of COVID-19, but I think the most important thing at this moment is we need to be careful about changing tactics and strategies immediately on the basis of what we are seeing in early Omicron data.”
Last week Zimbabwe extended the level two lockdown measures by a further two weeks and postponed schools reopening as coronavirus infections spiked.
Meanwhile, statistics released by the Ministry of Health and Child Care show that on Tuesday, there were 1 591 new coronavirus cases recorded, while 31 people succumbed to the virus.
The test positivity rate had also declined to 22.14% while the national recovery rate stood at 86%.
