As the world enters its third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that he was confident that the pandemic will end in 2022 “if we end inequity” together. Ghebreyesus said, “While no country is out of the woods from the pandemic, we have many tools to prevent and treat Covid-19. The longer inequity continues, the higher the risks of this virus evolving in ways we can’t prevent or predict. If we end inequity, we can end the pandemic.”

Highlighting that Covid-19 is not the only health threat the world’s people will face next year, he said millions of people have missed out on routine vaccination, services for family planning, treatment for communicable and non-communicable diseases. The WHO chief stated that to help prepare the world for future epidemics and pandemics, WHO has established the new WHO BioHub System for countries to share novel biological materials. “And we opened the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin, to leverage innovations in data science for public health surveillance and response,” he added.