As the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic en­ters its third year in the Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as, Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) Di­rec­tor, Dr. Jar­bas Bar­bosa, has called on coun­tries to strength­en sur­veil­lance and bridge gaps in vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age to end the emer­gency and bet­ter pre­pare for fu­ture health crises.

Over the past three years, the Amer­i­c­as had over 190.3 mil­lion COVID-19 cas­es and over 2.9 mil­lion deaths, ac­count­ing for 25% and 43% of the glob­al to­tal re­spec­tive­ly.

“The pan­dem­ic un­der­scored that no coun­try or or­ga­ni­za­tion in the world was ful­ly pre­pared for the im­pact of this pan­dem­ic,” Dr Bar­bosa said dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day.

“This in­cludes the Amer­i­c­as, which is a re­gion ‘marked by in­equities’,” he ob­served.

“To­day, in­ci­dence rates are 20-30 times low­er than a year ago, but “while we are not to­tal­ly out of the woods, we are in a much bet­ter place,” he added.

The PA­HO Di­rec­tor high­light­ed the key role PA­HO played in help­ing coun­tries get to this place. This in­cludes build­ing and strength­en­ing the COVID-19 Ge­nom­ic Sur­veil­lance Re­gion­al Net­work, which is key to track­ing the evo­lu­tion of the virus, as well as mon­i­tor­ing for oth­er pathogens with pan­dem­ic po­ten­tial, in­clud­ing avian flu. Over the past three years, the net­work has fa­cil­i­tat­ed the up­load­ing of more than 580,000 se­quences from Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean in­to glob­al data­bas­es.

Dr. Bar­bosa al­so high­light­ed the role PA­HO played in get­ting COVID-19 vac­cine shots in­to arms “mo­bi­liz­ing over 160 mil­lion dos­es through CO­V­AX and help­ing the coun­tries of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean roll out more than 1.3 bil­lion vac­cine dos­es in less than two years.”

De­spite these achieve­ments, Dr. Bar­bosa warned that “COVID-19 is still with us and the virus has yet to set­tle in­to a pre­dictable pat­tern.”

“Through­out the last month, we have seen more than 1.5 mil­lion new cas­es and 17,000 deaths,” the PA­HO Di­rec­tor said. “We can­not be com­pla­cent.”

Dr. Bar­bosa warned that while test­ing rates have dropped, it is cru­cial that coun­tries main­tain and con­tin­ue to strength­en sur­veil­lance as the SARS-CoV-2 virus, “can evolve and adapt quick­ly”.

“Reach­ing the 30% of peo­ple who have yet to re­ceive their COVID-19 pri­ma­ry se­ries of COVID-19 vac­cine, is al­so key to “prepar­ing our­selves for any new wave of in­fec­tion or new vari­ant of con­cern,” he stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the PA­HO Di­rec­tor, the Re­gion has ex­pe­ri­enced a va­ri­ety of set­backs through­out the pan­dem­ic that have re­vealed or ex­ac­er­bat­ed weak­ness­es in coun­tries’ health sys­tems, in­clud­ing in the de­tec­tion and treat­ment of dis­eases such as TB and HIV, in the test­ing and treat­ment of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases; and in de­clin­ing rates for rou­tine vac­ci­na­tion.

“We now have a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to place health at the cen­tre of the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Agen­da,” Dr Bar­bosa point­ed out.

“We must fo­cus on re­cov­er­ing loss­es and on re­build­ing re­silient health sys­tems that work for every­one, as well as be­ing bet­ter pre­pared for fu­ture health threats,” the PA­HO Di­rec­tor said.

“As I be­gin my tenure, a pri­ma­ry fo­cus is to help coun­tries of the Amer­i­c­as move past the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” he as­sert­ed.

“PA­HO stands ready to sup­port our coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as, to learn from and ap­ply the lessons we have learned from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.” —Wash­ing­ton, D.C. (PA­HO)