COVID-19 IS NO MORE A HEALTH EMERGENCY – WHO

COVID-19 IS NO MORE A HEALTH EMERGENCY – WHO

WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee discussed the pandemic on Thursday 4th May, 2023 at its 15th meeting on Covid-19, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus concurred that the public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, declaration should end.

“For more than a year the pandemic has been on a downward trend,” Tedros (Public Health Researcher of WHO) said at a news conference Friday.

“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.”
The organization declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern in January 2020, about six weeks before characterizing it 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 in order to ease a crisis.
The United States is set to let its Covid-19 public health emergency end on May 11.

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.
“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 Programme.

“One of the greatest tragedies of Covid-19 is that it didn’t have to be this way. 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, a lack of equity, and lack of solidarity meant that those tools were not used as effectively as they could have been,” Tedros said. “We must promise ourselves and our children and grandchildren that we will never make those mistakes again.”