The head of the World Health Organization said the agency is “very concerned” about rising reports of severe coronavirus disease across China after the country largely abandoned its “zero COVID” policy, warning that its lagging vaccination rate could result in large numbers of vulnerable people getting infected.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently detailed three things that Ukrainian civilians must prioritize to survive the upcoming winter, as the nation's war with Russia continues to rage.

The World Health Organization on Thursday warned that it is struggling to identify and track new Covid variants as governments roll back testing and surveillance, threatening the progress made in the fight against the virus.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, said the virus is still circulating at an “incredibly intense level” around the world. The WHO is “deeply concerned” that it is evolving at a time when there is no longer robust testing in place to help rapidly identify new variants, Van Kerkhove said.

The world has never been in a better position to end the COVID-19 pandemic, the head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, his most optimistic outlook yet on the years-long health crisis which has killed over six million people.

"We are not there yet. But the end is in sight," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a virtual press conference.

That was the most upbeat assessment from the UN agency since it declared an international emergency in January 2020 and started describing COVID-19 as a pandemic three months later.

The world has never been in a better position to end the COVID-19 pandemic, the head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, urging nations to keep up their efforts against the virus that has killed over six million people.

"We are not there yet. But the end is in sight," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a virtual press conference.

The comment was the most optimistic from the UN agency since it declared COVID-19 an international emergency and started describing the virus as a pandemic in March 2020.

The world has never been in a better position to end the Covid-19 pandemic, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said in a news briefing in Geneva on Wednesday.

“Last week, the number of weekly reported deaths from Covid-19 was the lowest since March 2020,” he said. “We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic. We’re not there yet, but the end is in sight.

The Covid pandemic may be nearing a close, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

New weekly deaths reached their lowest point last week since March 2020. The WHO recorded around 11,000 deaths globally the week of Sept. 5-11, a 22% decrease from the previous week.

New weekly cases also fell by 28% in that time, from nearly 4.2 million during the week of Aug. 29 to Sept. 4 to around 3.1 million last week, according to the WHO.

The World Health Organization’s top director in the Western Pacific, Dr. Takeshi Kasai, has been indefinitely removed from his post, according to internal correspondence obtained by The Associated Press.

Kasai’s removal comes months after an AP investigation revealed that dozens of staffers accused him of racist, abusive and unethical behavior that undermined the U.N. agency’s efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic in Asia.

Monkeypox cases in some large US cities appear to be declining, matching trends seen in Europe, and experts are cautiously optimistic the outbreak may have peaked in places hit hardest by the virus.

The optimism comes just as US officials on Friday said there’s enough of a supply of monkeypox vaccine available now – though the shots aren’t getting to some of the people who need the protection the most.

A top United Nations official has warned fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region has spawned the worst humanitarian disaster on Earth. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — who’s originally from Tigray — said the conflict, which first erupted in late 2020, now threatens the lives of millions, even as global leaders largely ignore the crisis.