World Health Assembly begins with dire warnings from WHO chief: COVID-19 pandemic ‘most certainly not over’ and ‘we lower our guard at our peril’, as almost one billion people in lower-income countries, mainly in Africa, remain unvaccinated

Simon Ateba( Chief White House Correspondent )

Simon Ateba is Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa. Simon covers President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial and international institutions in Washington D.C. and New York City.

The 2022 World Health Assembly began in Geneva, Switzerland, on Sunday, with dire warnings from the World Health Organization Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who asserted that the coronavirus pandemic, now in its third year, is “most certainly not over” and that “we lower our guard at our peril.”

“The pandemic is most certainly not over,” Dr. Ghebreysus said in his opening remarks. “This virus has surprised us at every turn – a storm that has torn through communities again and again, and we still can’t predict its path, or its intensity. We lower our guard at our peril.”