“It´s reasonable to expect that with the arrival of cold weather there will be an increase in transmission and deaths,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom in the context of the 72nd Meeting of the World Health Organization’s Regional Committee for Europe.

Earlier, Dr. Adhanom argued the danger for this forecast to come true is in the northern hemisphere, where weather will be marked by low temperatures.

He recalled that the Omicron subvariants are more transmissible than the previous ones, and the risk of even more transmissible mutations remains.

Dr. Adhanom called on governments to redouble efforts to expand Covid-19 vaccination coverage.

“One-third of the world’s population remains unvaccinated, including two-thirds of health workers and three-quarters of the elderly in low-income countries,” the WHO director-general said.

“Redouble your efforts” to immunize all health care workers, the elderly and others at higher risk, as WHO’s goal is to reach 70% of global people fully vaccinated.

World´s overall Covid-19 death toll exceeded 1 million, but the real figure, is probably much higher, as although more than 3.5 million deaths were reported in 2021 in many countries they no longer track and report cases and deaths with the same accuracy.

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