The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency. This decision was taken after the organization's International Health Regulations Emergency Committee discussed the pandemic at its 15th meeting on the subject.
The announcement was made by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who stated that the public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) declaration should end. He pointed out that for more than a year now, the pandemic has been on a downward trend, allowing most countries to return to life as we knew it before Covid-19.
The WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern in January 2020, and six weeks later, it was characterized as a pandemic. A PHEIC creates an agreement between countries to abide by WHO's recommendations for managing the emergency. Each country, in turn, declares its own public health emergency declarations that carry legal weight. Countries use them to marshal resources and waive rules to ease a crisis.
While 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. They emphasized that there is still a public health threat and that the virus will continue to transmit, as is the history of pandemics.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's Covid-19 technical lead and head of its program on emerging diseases, said that the emergency phase of the Covid-19 crisis is over but the disease is "here to stay" and the coronavirus that causes the disease is not going away anytime soon. She added that while we are not in crisis mode, we cannot let our guard down.
There have been over 765 million confirmed Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, and nearly 7 million people have died. Europe has reported the most confirmed cases overall, while the Americas have reported the most deaths. Cases peaked in December 2022 as the Omicron variant swept the globe, but billions of vaccine doses have been administered globally, and deaths have remained far below previous peaks.
Now, Covid-19 cases and deaths are at their lowest levels in three years. However, more than 3,500 people died in the last week of April, and billions of people remain unvaccinated. Tedros said that if needed, he would not hesitate to convene another emergency committee meeting and declare a global health emergency again if there is a significant rise in Covid-19 cases or deaths in the future.
In conclusion, Tedros emphasized that Covid-19 has left deep scars on our world and that those scars must serve as a permanent reminder of the potential for new viruses to emerge with devastating consequences. He added that we have the tools and technologies to prepare for pandemics better, detect them earlier, respond to them faster, and communicate their impact. But globally, a lack of coordination, equity, and solidarity meant those tools were not used as effectively as they could have been, and we must promise ourselves and our children and grandchildren that we will never make those mistakes again.