WHO: COVID-19 is no longer a global threat

WHO says COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency. This declaration was an important step towards ending the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 6.9 million people on all continents.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has sickened or killed nearly 800 million people worldwide in three years, is no longer a global health emergency, the head of the World Health Organization said.

The WHO first declared the highest level of alert for Covid on January 30, 2020, and its commission continues to apply the label at meetings every three months.

While WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced on Friday that the UN health agency was downgrading the COVID alert status, he also issued a strong warning about the ongoing threat of coronavirus disease. According to him, the disease still continues to kill someone every three minutes.

“Yesterday, the emergency committee met for the 15th time and recommended that I declare an end to a public health emergency of international concern,” said Dr. Tedros. “I took this advice.”

The WHO chief added: “It is therefore with great hope that I declare Covid-19 a global health emergency. However, this does not mean that Covid-19 has ceased to be a global health threat. Last week, Covid-19 claimed a life every three minutes – and these are just the deaths we know about.”

The global health emergency has helped bring international attention to the Covid threat, as well as strengthen collaboration on vaccines and treatments. Its cancellation is a sign of the progress the world has made in these areas, but Covid-19 is here to stay, health officials say, even if it no longer represents an emergency.

The WHO does not declare the start or end of pandemics, although it began using the term to refer to COVID in March 2020, recalls The Guardian. The head of the organization, Tedros, said the decision to lower the alert status did not mean the danger was over, warning that emergency status could be restored if the situation changed.

“The worst thing any country can do now is use this news as an excuse to lower its guard, dismantle the systems it has built, or send a message to its people that Covid-19 is not a cause for concern,” said the WHO director general.

According to the WHO, Covid has officially claimed more than 6.9 million lives and affected the health of more than 765 million others. It said the true numbers were likely to be much higher. Covid deaths worldwide have dropped by 95% since January, but the disease still killed 16,000 people worldwide last month alone.

Despite the ongoing danger, the pandemic is forgotten in many, if not most, countries. Tedros said this week that testing and tracing efforts have “been significantly reduced around the world, making it difficult to trace known variants and discover new ones.”

He also warned of continued exposure to prolonged Covid, which triggers a long series of often severe and debilitating symptoms that can last for months or years. The disease is estimated to affect one in ten people who contract Covid, suggesting that hundreds of millions of people may need longer-term care, he said.

Prolonged Covid has been destroying lives and livelihoods and wreaking havoc on health systems and economies, Tedros told The Guardian last year, urging countries to make immediate and sustained efforts to overcome a “very serious” crisis.

“While the pandemic has changed dramatically due to the introduction of many life-saving tools and there is light at the end of the tunnel, the consequences of prolonged Covid for all countries are very serious and require immediate and sustainable action equivalent to its magnitude,” he said.

The head of the World Health Organization added: “At the start of the pandemic, it was important for overburdened health systems to focus all their efforts on saving the lives of Covid-19 patients who had an acute infection. However, it is critical for governments to invest long-term in their healthcare system and workers and develop a plan to fight protracted Covid now.”