Weekly COVID-19 deaths dropped to the lowest level since March 2020, signaling an encouraging development that should be seen through a cautious lens, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday at a briefing.In US developments, Pfizer/BioNTech has submitted an application for emergency use of its vaccine for booster doses in children, as the nation's cases creep upward.WHO presses countries to keep tracking COVIDTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said cases and deaths continue to drop, with just over 15,000 deaths reported to the WHO last week, which he said is the lowest weekly total since March 2020.He said the welcome news comes with the caveat that countries are reducing their testing, and the WHO is receiving less information on transmission and evolution. "But this virus won't go away just because countries stop looking for it," Tedros said. "It's still spreading, it's still changing, and it's still killing."The threat of new variants is still very real, and scientists still don't understand the long-term consequences of infection, he said, repeating the WHO's call for countries to maintain their surveillance activities.In China, Beijing has completed its first round of mass testing, which targeted 20 million people and yielded 12 cases.
Cases in the city have been slowly rising, prompting mass testing and fears that residents of the country's capital could face a lockdown, similar to Shanghai's—which has been in effect for about a month.About one-third of Beijing's recent cases are from school-related clusters, and officials have started weekly testing for teachers and students, according to the Global Times, an English-language news outlet based in China.