WHO says Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency

CNN
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Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

The WHO International Health Regulations Emergency Committee discussed the pandemic on Thursday at its 15th meeting on Covid-19, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus agreed that the declaration of a public health emergency of international interest, or PHEIC, for its acronym in English should end.

“For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend,” Tedros said at a news conference on Friday.

“This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before COVID-19,” Tedros said. “Yesterday, the emergency committee met for the fifteenth time and recommended that I declare the end of the public health emergency of international concern. I have accepted that advice.

The organization stated that the coronavirus outbreak is a public health emergency of international concern in January 2020, about six weeks before characterizing it as a pandemic.

A PHEIC creates an agreement between countries to comply with the WHO recommendations for emergency management. Each country, in turn, declares its own public health emergency, declarations that carry legal weight. Countries use them to pool resources and waive the rules to alleviate a crisis.

The United States is willing to let its End of public health emergency by covid-19 on May 11.

Covid-19 continues to spread, the virus is evolving and remains a global health threat, but at a lower level of concern, according to WHO officials.

“There is still a threat to public health, and we all see it every day in terms of the evolution of this virus, in terms of its global presence, its continuing evolution, and the continuing vulnerabilities in our communities, both societal vulnerabilities, age, protection vulnerabilities and many other things,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme.

“So we expect this virus to continue to spread, but this is the story of pandemics,” Ryan said. “In most cases, pandemics really end when the next pandemic starts. I know it’s a terrible thought, but that’s the story of pandemics.”

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical director of Covid-19 and head of its program on emerging diseases, said the emergency phase of the Covid-19 crisis is over, but the disease is “here to stay” and the coronavirus that causes it is not going away anytime soon.

“While we are not in crisis mode, we cannot let our guard down,” Van Kerkhove said. “Epidemiologically, this virus will continue to make waves. What we hope is that we have the tools to ensure that future waves don’t result in more severe disease, they don’t result in waves of death, and we can do that with the tools at hand. We just need to make sure we’re tracking the virus because it will continue to evolve.”

There have been more than 765 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to WHO data. Nearly 7 million people have died. Europe has had the most confirmed cases overall, but the Americas have reported the most deaths. Approximately 1 in 6 total deaths have occurred in the US.

Cases peaked in December 2022 when Omicron swept across the globe, hitting the western Pacific especially hard. But billions of doses of vaccines have been administered around the world, and deaths have remained well below previous peaks.

Now, Covid-19 cases and deaths are the lowest in three years. Still, more than 3,500 people died in the last week of April and billions remain unvaccinated.

Tedros said that, if necessary, he would not hesitate to call another emergency committee meeting and declare a global health emergency again if there is a significant increase in Covid-19 cases or deaths in the future.

“Covid-19 has left and continues to leave deep scars on our world. Those scars should serve as a permanent reminder of the potential for new viruses to emerge with devastating consequences,” Tedros said.

“One of the biggest tragedies of covid-19 is that it didn’t have to be this way. We have the tools and technologies to better prepare for pandemics, detect them earlier, respond faster, and communicate their impact. But globally, the lack of coordination, the lack of equity and the lack of solidarity meant that those tools were not used as effectively as they could have been,” Tedros said. “We must promise ourselves and our children and grandchildren that we will never make those mistakes again.”