WHO chief says India's Covid situation hugely concerning, warns of far more deadly pandemic this year

India's COVID-19 situation remains hugely concerning, with several states continuing to see a worrying number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.

Ghebreyesus added that the WHO is responding to the COVID-19 surge in India and has shipped thousands of oxygen concentrators, tents for mobile field hospitals, masks and other medical supplies.

World health experts also issued a grim warning that the second year of Covid-19 was set to be "far more deadly". "We're on track for the second year of this pandemic to be far more deadly than the first," the World Health Organization's director-general said.