The World Health Organization has declared that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency, marking a symbolic end to the devastating coronavirus pandemic that triggered lockdowns, turned economies upside down and killed at least 7 million people worldwide.
WHO first declared COVID-19 to be an emergency three years ago. The U.N. health agency’s officials stressed that even though the emergency phase was over, the pandemic has not come to an end, noting recent spikes in cases in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
When the U.N. health agency first declared the coronavirus to be an international crisis on January 30, 2020, it had not yet been named COVID-19 and there were no major outbreaks beyond China.
WHO stated that thousands of people are dying from the virus every week, and millions of others report that they are still suffering from debilitating, long-term effects from the disease.
“It’s with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “That does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat,” he said, adding that he would not hesitate to reconvene experts to reassess the situation should COVID-19 “put our world in peril.”
“The worst thing any country can do now is to use this news as a reason to let down its guard, to dismantle the systems it has built, or to send the message to its people that COVID-19 is nothing to worry about.”
WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Tedros disclosed that the pandemic had been on a downward trend for more than a year, acknowledging that most countries have already returned to life before COVID-19.
However, the WHO Director-Gerneral bewailed the damage that COVID-19 had done to the global community, saying that the pandemic had shattered businesses, exacerbated political divisions, led to the spread of misinformation and plunged millions into poverty.
Tedros also noted that there were likely at least 20 million COVID-19 deaths, far more than the officially reported 7 million. “COVID has changed our world and it has changed us,” he said, warning that the risk of new variants still remained.
Incumbent On Heads Of States To Determine How Future Health Threats Should Be Faced
Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO’s Emergencies Chief, averred that it was incumbent on heads of states and other leaders to decide on how future health threats should be faced, given the numerous problems that crippled the world’s response to COVID-19.
Ryan said that the emergency may have ended, but the threat is still there.
“We fully expect that this virus will continue to transmit, and this is the history of pandemics. It took decades for the final throws of the pandemic virus of 1918 to disappear. In most cases pandemics truly end when the next pandemic begins.”
Dr. Michael Ryan
Countries are negotiating a pandemic treaty that some hope may spell out how future disease threats will be faced but it is unlikely any such treaty would be legally binding.
When Tedros declared COVID-19 to be an emergency in 2020, he said his greatest fear was the virus’ potential to spread in countries with weak health systems.
Three years later, the virus has caused an estimated 764 million cases globally and about 5 billion people have received at least one dose of vaccine.
In fact, some of the countries that suffered the worst COVID-19 death tolls were previously judged to be the best-prepared for a pandemic, including the U.S. and Britain. According to WHO data, the number of deaths reported in Africa account for just 3% of the global total.
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