geneva the world health organization chief called monday for the world to pull together and make the difficult decisions needed to end the covid19 pandemic within the next year 2022 must be the year we end the pandemic who director general tedros adhanom ghebreyesus told reporters in geneva as the endofyear festivities approach the un health agency chief acknowledged that all of us want to spend time with friends and family all of us want to get back to normal but he said to get back to normal we need to protect ourselves now as cases fuelled by the fastspreading omicron variant surge since it was first reported in south africa in november omicron has been identified in dozens of countries dashing hopes that the worst of the pandemic is over despite indications it is not more severe than the delta variant still the dominant strain omicron has been shown in early data to have higher transmissibility and a worrying resistance to vaccines with cases rising rapidly tedros stressed it was better to cancel events now and celebrate later than to celebrate now and grieve later we have to focus now on ending this pandemic tedros insisted it was possible to halt the pandemic but said it would require using all the tools are our disposal ranging from vaccines to maskwearing and physical distancing and perhaps most importantly the world needed to end the glaring inequity in access to vaccines if we are to end the pandemic in the coming year we must end inequity he said