Health authorities still aren't able to accurately predict how big Covid surges will be from season to season, Van Kerkhove said. Some public health experts believe the virus will eventually behave similar to the flu, where there are manageable waves of infection during the fall and winter months.
"We don't yet have predictability with SARS-CoV-2 like we have other types of pathogens where we expect a seasonality. We may get there, but we're not there that. That's the message — we're not there yet," van Kerkhove said. Though the future is uncertain, Tedros said the world is in a significantly better position compared with any other point in the pandemic. Two-thirds of the world's population is vaccinated, including three-quarters of health-care workers and older people, he said
Weekly Covid deaths have continued to decline dramatically across all regions of the world and are now 10% of the pandemic's peak in January 2021, according to WHO data. More than 9,800 people died from Covid during the week ending Sept. 18, down 17% from the prior week. "We are in a significantly better position than we have ever been. In most countries restrictions have ended and life looks much like it did before the pandemic," Tedros said."But 10,000 deaths a week is 10,000 too many when most of these deaths could be prevented."