WHO envoy says the pandemic's end is 'in sight,' but things will be 'difficult' until at least the spring

• A World Health Organization special envoy said on Monday that the pandemic's end was in sight.
• But the envoy, David Nabarro, told Sky News that life would be difficult until at least the spring.

A special envoy on the World Health Organization's coronavirus team said on Monday that the pandemic's end was in sight, but that life would still be difficult until at least the spring.

"I'm afraid we are moving through the marathon but there's no actual way to say that we're at the end — we can see the end in sight, but we're not there," special envoy David Nabarro told Sky News.

He added that before the world got to the end of the pandemic, there would be "some bumps."

"It's going to be difficult for the next three months at least," Nabarro told Sky.

He said that the world would continue to see new COVID-19 variants and feel the pressure of strained healthcare systems.

Though it's difficult to use the past to predict the virus' future behavior, Nabarro said he expected the virus to come in surges, and in order to live with it, people would need to prepare and react quickly to the surges.

"Life can go on, we can get the economy going again in many countries, but we just have to be really respectful of the virus and that means having really good plans in place for dealing with the surges," he said.

The world is facing a surge in COVID-19 cases in part because of the Omicron variant.

As of January 9, the world was facing an average of 2.4 million daily COVID-19 cases globally, according to Johns Hopkins data shared by The New York Times.

The US, which boasts the world's highest case count, is averaging almost 670,000 new daily cases — fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant — the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data indicated.