COVID digest: WHO decries worldwide drop in coronavirus testing

The WHO chief has urged countries to ramp up testing to accurately reflect global transmission trends. Meanwhile, Mexico said it is transitioning from pandemic to endemic. DW has the latest.

'When it comes to a deadly virus, ignorance is not bliss,' the WHO chief said

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said a dramatic drop in testing is cause for serious concern as health authorities and the public become less aware of patterns of COVID transmission. 

"As many countries reduce testing, WHO is receiving less and less information about transmission and sequencing," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus told a press conference in Geneva.

"This makes us increasingly blind to patterns of transmission and evolution," he added.

"When it comes to a deadly virus, ignorance is not bliss ... This virus won't go away just because countries stop looking for it," Tedros said. 

WHO said it was notified of just over 15,000 deaths last week, the lowest weekly total since March 2020.

WHO added that while it welcomed the trend, it was concerned that reduced testing was not accurately reflecting the presence of coronavirus. 

Bill Rodriguez, chief executive of FIND, a global alliance for diagnostics, said many governments have simply stopped looking for the virus, and that testing rates have plummeted by 70% to 90% worldwide.

"We have an unprecedented ability to know what is happening," Rodriguez said. "And yet today because testing has been the first casualty of a global decision to let down our guard, we're becoming blind to what is happening with this virus," he added. 

Here are the latest major coronavirus developments from around the world:

Americas

German pharmaceutical company BioNTech and US partner Pfizer filed an application Tuesday with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an emergency approval of a booster vaccine for children aged between five and 11.

They are also expected to submit applications for approval for their COVID vaccine to other global regulatory agencies like the European Medicines Agency.

US Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, but is not showing any symptoms so far, a spokesperson said. 

Harris has not been in contact with the either President Joe Biden or First Lady Jill Biden due to differing schedules, Harris's press secretary said. Harris has also taken Paxlovid, Pfizer's COVID-19 antiviral pill. 

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced it was taking steps to expand the availability of Paxlovid so doctors could prescribe the pill to those who needed it without worrying about falling short of supplies. 

Even though cases have been falling overall, infections have risen in some parts of the US because of the spread of sub variant of the omicron strain, called BA.2.

Mexico said Tuesday it was considering coronavirus as an endemic, rather than a pandemic, because COVID rates were falling and its impact has more manageable. Death rates have also fallen sharply.

"It is now retreating almost completely," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, referring to the virus. But that may be because Mexico, which was never particularly big on testing, is screening fewer people now. Mexico has recorded nearly 325,000 confirmed deaths from the virus, but experts say the actual death toll is higher.