"Around
the world, cases and deaths are continuing to increase at worrying rates,"
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing focused on
Papua New Guinea and the western Pacific.
"Globally,
the number of new cases per week has nearly doubled over the past two months.
This is approaching the highest rate of infection that we have seen so far
during the pandemic," he continued.
"Some
countries that had previously avoided widespread transmission are now seeing
steep increases in infections," Tedros said, citing Papua New Guinea as
one example.
Tedros said
the United Nations health agency will continue to assess the evolution of the
coronavirus crisis and "adjust advice accordingly."
Under
international health regulations, Tedros said, WHO's emergency committee
convened on Thursday, and he expects to receive their advice on Monday.
"Globally,
our message to all people in all countries remains the same. We all have a role
to play in ending the pandemic," he said.
More than
139 million Covid cases have been reported worldwide, with 2.9 million deaths,
according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The WHO
declared the coronavirus a global pandemic on March 11, 2020.
'Shocking
imbalance'
Tedros has
previously said that one of the WHO's main priorities is to increase the
ambition of COVAX, an initiative working for global equitable access to Covid
vaccines, to help all countries end the pandemic.
The COVAX
plan was expected to deliver almost 100 million vaccines to people by the end
of March, but it has distributed only some 38 million doses.
The WHO has
said it hopes the initiative will be able to catch up in coming months but has
condemned what it describes as a "shocking imbalance" in the
distribution of vaccines between high- and low-income countries.
The health
agency has also criticized countries that have sought their own vaccine deals
outside of the COVAX initiative for political or commercial reasons.
At the
start of the year, Tedros warned that the world was on the brink of a
"catastrophic moral failure" over vaccine inequality.
He said a "me-first approach" to vaccines would leave the world's poorest and most vulnerable people at risk, adding the approach was "self-defeating" since it would encourage hoarding and likely prolong the health crisis.