Yet, Committee Members expressed concern about the ongoing risk posed by COVID-19, with a still high number of deaths compared to other respiratory infectious diseases, the insufficient vaccine uptake in low- and middle-income countries, as well as in the highest-risk groups globally, and the uncertainty associated with emerging variants.
They recognized that pandemic fatigue and reduced public perception of risk have led to drastically reduced use of public health and social measures, such as masks and social distancing.
4895
“疫苗犹豫”和错误信息的持续传播仍然是实施关键公共卫生干预措施的额外障碍。
Vaccine hesitancy and the continuing spread of misinformation continue to be extra hurdles to the implementation of crucial public health interventions.
At the same time, the long-term systemic sequelae of post-COVID condition and the elevated risk of post-infection cardiovascular and metabolic disease will likely have serious negative on-going impact on population, and care pathways for such patients are limited or not available in many countries.
The Committee acknowledged that, while the Omicron sub-lineages currently circulating globally are highly transmissible, there has been a decoupling between infection and severe disease when compared to earlier variants of concern.
4898
然而，该病毒保留了进化成新变种（其特征无法预测）的能力。
However, the virus retains an ability to evolve into new variants with unpredictable characteristics.
The Committee expressed a need for improved surveillance and reporting on hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths to better understand the current impact on health systems and to appropriately characterize the clinical features of COVID-19 and post COVID-19 condition.
Persistent health workforce shortages and fatigue and competing priorities, including other disease outbreaks, continue to stretch health systems in many countries.