COVID-19 News: 'Far From The Time To Drop Guard' As Vaccine Inequality Persists, WHO Says

COVID-19-related deaths and infections have been on the decline for the third-straight week, yet the World Health Organization has stressed that the virus continues to be a health crisis.

“Far from being the time to drop our guard, this is the moment to work even harder to save lives,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu said. “Specifically, this means investing so that Covid-19 tools are equitably distributed, and we simultaneously strengthen health systems.”

The WHO has urged nations worldwide to make sure 70% of their populations have received the COVID-19 by the middle of this year. According to the U.N. health agency, however, 75 nations have vaccination rates of under 40%.

The U.S. is currently experiencing a slight rise in cases. Over 30,000 new infections were reported on Monday, although new White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish K. Jha has said the numbers are not troubling, clarifying his belief that “this is a moment where we have to be excessively concerned.”

“Right now that is showing an uptick, but not showing substantial changes in what we should be doing,” Jha said.

The WHO has begun analyzing many cases of new sub-variants of Omicron to deduce if they are more contagious, or if they are more deadly.

The agency said that it will begin observing BA.4 and BA.5, relatives of the initial Omicron strain. A new COVID-19 variant has been discovered in the U.K., as the country’s Health Security Agency has begun studying it.

Dubbed "XE," it is described as a "recombinant" of the Omicron variant, and it's a relative of BA.2, with “the majority of the genome including the S gene belonging to BA.2.”