SOURCE: As­so­ci­at­ed Press

BERLIN (AP) — The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is “most cer­tain­ly not over,” the head of the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion warned Sun­day, de­spite a de­cline in re­port­ed cas­es since the peak of the omi­cron wave. He told gov­ern­ments that “we low­er our guard at our per­il.”

The U.N. health agency’s di­rec­tor-gen­er­al, Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus, told of­fi­cials gath­ered in Gene­va for open­ing of the WHO’s an­nu­al meet­ing that “de­clin­ing test­ing and se­quenc­ing means we are blind­ing our­selves to the evo­lu­tion of the virus.” He al­so not­ed that al­most 1 bil­lion peo­ple in low­er-in­come coun­tries still haven’t been vac­ci­nat­ed.

In a week­ly re­port Thurs­day on the glob­al sit­u­a­tion, WHO said the num­ber of new COVID-19 cas­es ap­pears to have sta­bi­lized af­ter weeks of de­cline since late March, while the over­all num­ber of week­ly deaths dropped.

While there has been progress, with 60% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion vac­ci­nat­ed, “it’s not over any­where un­til it’s over every­where,” Tedros said.

“Re­port­ed cas­es are in­creas­ing in al­most 70 coun­tries in all re­gions, and this in a world in which test­ing rates have plum­met­ed,” he added.

Re­port­ed deaths are ris­ing in Africa, the con­ti­nent with the low­est vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age, he said, and on­ly 57 coun­tries — al­most all of them wealthy — have vac­ci­nat­ed 70% of their peo­ple.

While the world’s vac­cine sup­ply has im­proved, there is “in­suf­fi­cient po­lit­i­cal com­mit­ment to roll out vac­cines” in some coun­tries, gaps in “op­er­a­tional or fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty” in oth­ers, he said.

“In all, we see vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy dri­ven by mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion,” Tedros said. “The pan­dem­ic will not mag­i­cal­ly dis­ap­pear, but we can end it.”

Tedros is ex­pect­ed to be ap­point­ed for a sec­ond five-year term this week at the World Health As­sem­bly, the an­nu­al meet­ing of the WHO’s mem­ber coun­tries.