Early Friday, WHO announced that Covid-19 is no longer a global emergency.
During a news conference on Thursday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “For more than a year the pandemic has been on a downward trend.”
“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 15th time and recommended to me that I declare an end to the public health emergency of international concern. I have accepted that advice.”
It took about six weeks before the organization classified the Coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic in January 2020.
On May 11, the Covid-19 public health emergency in the US will come to an end.
Despite the virus’s continuing spread, WHO officials say it is less concerning than before.
“There’s still a public health threat out there, and we all see that every day in terms of the evolution of this virus, in terms of its global presence, its continued evolution and continued vulnerabilities in our communities, both societal vulnerabilities, age vulnerabilities, protection vulnerabilities, and many other things,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program.
“So, we fully expect that this virus will continue to transmit, but this is the history of pandemics,” Ryan said. “In most cases, pandemics truly end when the next pandemic begins. I know that’s a terrible thought but that is the history of pandemics.”
