The World Health Organization (WHO) declared this Friday (5) the end of the international emergency for the Covid-19 pandemic, declared on January 30, 2020. the emergency classification change.
The decision was announced by the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, one day after the organization’s emergency committee met to analyze the current situation of the pandemic, which in more than three years has affected at least 765 million people and caused the death of about 20 million.
Since the beginning of the year, the number of notified cases of Covid-19 and deaths has been falling globally: in the last week of April, the WHO confirmed 630 thousand cases worldwide and 3.5 thousand deaths. In January there were more than 1.3 million positive cases and 14,000 deaths, in part due to a wave of infections in China.
The committee’s assessment is that Covid-19 is now “an established and ongoing health problem that no longer constitutes a public health emergency of international concern”. While acknowledging the remaining uncertainties of the potential evolution of SARS-CoV-2, the committee also understood that it is time to transition to long-term management of the disease.
In the coming months, the WHO director-general is expected to convene a new review committee to advise and develop standing recommendations for countries to manage the disease over the next two years.
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