The Covid-19 pandemic, which killed millions of people and wreaked economic and social havoc, no longer constitutes a global health emergency, the WHO said Friday, warning that the threat remained.
It is “with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency”, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
The move came after the WHO’s independent emergency committee on the Covid crisis agreed it no longer merited the organisation’s highest alert level and “advised that it is time to transition to long-term management of the COVID-19 pandemic”.
But the danger was not over, according to Tedros, who estimated Covid had killed “at least 20 million” people – about three times the nearly seven million deaths officially recorded.
“This virus is here to stay. It is still killing, and it’s still changing,” he said.
“The worst thing any country could 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.”
Never again
The UN health agency first declared the so-called public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) over the crisis on January 30, 2020.
That was weeks after the mysterious new viral disease was first detected in China and when fewer than 100 cases and no deaths had been reported outside that country.
But it was only after Tedros described the worsening Covid situation as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, that many countries woke up to the danger.
By then, the SARS CoV-2 virus which causes the disease had already begun its deadly rampage around the globe.
“One of the greatest tragedies of Covid-19 is that it didn’t have to be this way,” Tedros said, decrying that “a lack of coordination, a lack of equity and a lack of solidarity” meant “lives were lost that should not have been”.
“We must promise ourselves and our children and grandchildren that we will never make those mistakes again.”
Even though Covid deaths globally have plunged 95 percent since January, the disease remains a major killer.
Last week alone “Covid-19 claimed a life every three minutes”, Tedros said, “and that’s just the deaths we know about.”
“The emergency phase is over, but Covid is not,” agreed Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19.
