Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 6th Jan. World health agency on Friday confirmed that corona virus numbers are rising globally and that we “should expect more cases” in the coming winter months in the northern hemisphere.
WHO latest data covering the 4 weeks to 17 December indicated a 52 per cent increase in infections compared with the previous 28-days.
According to WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier that amounts to 850,000 new COVID-19 cases reported, but the true figure is likely much higher:
He told reporters in Geneva that “You know that all throughout the world and you’ve seen it in many of your own countries, the reporting has dropped, the surveillance centers have dropped, the vaccination centers have dropped, have been dismantled as well or shut down”.
Christian Lindmeier said “This, of course, leads to an incomplete picture and we should expect unfortunately more cases than we have officially reported.”
He added that most infections have been caused by a new COVID strain called JN.1 which is now under close scrutiny by the UN health agency as a “variant of interest”.
WHO said that JN.1 was reportedly first detected in the United States before spreading across dozens of the countries.
It evolved from the Omicron variant which was linked to a peak in COVID infections in 2022, it added.
