Covid variants: WHO convenes urgent gathering this Thursday, recommendations expected

Published by Caroline de Sortiraparis · Published on January 14, 2021 at 02:09 p.m.
British and South-African variants have the health authorities more and more worried. The World Health Organization Emergency Committee has also decided to bring their meeting forward to this Thursday January 14, 2021 to address the situation.

Covid-19 variants found in the United-Kingdom and South Africa and more recently in Japan have the authorities always more worried. Proof of it, the World Health Organization Emergency Committee has decided to meet this Thursday January 14, 2021, that is to say two weeks before they were to originally meet.

The committee normally gathers every three months” this time “the WHO said the director-general pulled the meeting forward to consider issues that need urgent discussion. These are the recent variants and considerations on the use (of) vaccination and testing certificates for international travel" WHO explained on January 13 in the evening in a press release. WHO will deliver recommendations at the end of this early meeting.

For the record, a first variant of coronavirus was identified in Great-Britain leading to the halt of many flights coming from England. Another variant of the virus – said to be even more contagious – was also spotted in South Africa. Since then, these variants spread in about fifty countries across the world, WHO says. Many of them even decided to implement a new curfew including Germany, Austria and even Israel.

A new and third strain of coronavirus has been recently found in Japan in passengers from Brazil. In their report, WHO thinks this is a “worrying variant”. In order to assess the mutation of the virus, the country now wishes to isolate it. For the record, it is necessary to sequence the Covid variants to identify them, and analyzing is not always possible.

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