COVID-19 pandemic is no longer a global emergency: WHO
COVID-19 is no longer a global emergency, World Health Organization confirmed on Friday.
The deadly virus was declared a global emergency over three years ago, however for the last year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend.
On Friday, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “life has been allowed to return to normal.”
“COVID-19 has been so much more than a health crisis, disrupting economies, travel, shattering businesses and plunging millions into poverty,” Ghebreyesus said in a press conference on Friday.
“Therefore, with great hope, I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” he added.
Ghebreyesus went on to say the public shouldn’t forget the extensive damage from COVID.
“The painful lessons we have learned cannot go to waste,” he continued. “We owe it to those we have lost to liberate those investments, to build on those capacities, to learn from those lessons and make sure that suffering leads to lasting change.”
WHO first declared COVID-19 a global emergency on Jan. 30, 2020. At the time, there were less than 10,000 cases and most of them were in China.
Ghebreyesus also noted that 7 million deaths were officially reported — but estimated the total was likely closer to 20 million.
“COVID has changed our world and it has changed us,” he said, warning that the risk of new variants still remains. He said there’s also a risk of another global health emergency being declared again if there is a significant rise in COVID-19 cases or deaths.
“COVID-19 has left and continues to leave deep scars on our world,” he acknowledged. “Those scars must serve as a permanent reminder of the potential for new viruses to emerge with devastating consequences.”
There’s been an estimated 764 million cases of COVID-19 globally and about 5 billion people have received at least one dose of vaccine.
The public health emergency declaration made regarding COVID-19 is set to expire on May 11 in the U.S. At its expiration, the wide-ranging measures to support the pandemic response, including vaccine mandates, will end.
Many other countries, including Germany, France and Britain, dropped many of their COVID mandates last year.
With Post wires.
