Rabat – The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed its concern that reduced COVID-19 testing and sequencing is leaving us blind to the virus’ presence and mutations. “It is increasingly difficult to know where the virus is and how it’s mutating,” highlighted WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during this week’s COVID-19 briefing.
Another 3,812,901 COVID-19 cases were detected this week, with a remarkable 96.5% of these cases reported in just three WHO regions. Europe, the Western Pacific and the Americas reported 3,681,919 cases out of the total, prompting concerns that much of the world is not testing enough to detect new outbreaks.
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Three WHO regions, South-East Asia, Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean reported less than 5% of global cases, despite these regions containing a large part of the global population. While these numbers could be a positive sign that these countries, with significantly lower mobility and a younger population, could be doing better, it is difficult to tell, according to the WHO.
The WHO is concerned that lower testing is undermining the urgency to vaccinate people in these regions Dr Tedros highlighted the cases of Eritrea and North Korea on Wednesday, where the lack of vaccinations could mean new outbreaks have an unnecessarily deadly impact.
In Morocco, the country’s epidemic remains largely stable, with a small uptick in new daily cases reported after the conclusion of Ramadan and Eid al Fitr, which commonly bring families together. On Friday, Morocco reported 153 new cases, concluding three days where new daily cases surpassed the one hundred-mark again.
Morocco’s limited caseload stands in stark contrast with some of the worst-hit countries in the world. The US in particular is approaching a grim milestone, as current numbers suggest that the country is set to record its one-millionth death in the coming month. This means that the US COVID-19 epidemic will have claimed about one out of every 332 American lives.
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