The World Health Organization has declared the end of the pandemic globally after the favorable opinion of the technical committee. The general manager: The emergency is over, but the virus is here to stay
The World Health Organization has put an end to the global Covid health emergency-19 Friday, saying the time has come for countries to move from treating Covid as an emergency toDeal with it as a disease destined to stay. The decision was made on the advice of a committee of independent experts, the so-called Covid-19 emergency committee, which met on Thursday. with great hope I declare that Covid-19 ended as a global health emergency said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a press conference from Geneva. He warned, however, that the threat posed by the virus remains. The emergency phase is over, but Covid is here to stay, he said Maria Van KerkhoveWHO Covid Technical Manager.
Tedros and other WHO officials stressed that the World Health Organization has ended thepublic health emergency of international concern, but the pandemic is not over. WHO does not declare the start of a pandemic and will not even declare the end. However, a Covid-weary world is likely to interpret this announcement that way, WHO officials said. The risk remains new variants emerging that can cause new waves of cases and deaths – he added Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – and the worst thing countries can do now is to use this news to let their guard down, to dismantle the system they have built and to send people the message that Covid is no longer something to worry about.
The Covid-19 public health emergency of international concern effective January 30, 2020. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization estimates thatand at least 20 million people worldwide have died from the new disease. while the official numbers (disease diagnosed with a swab) speak of 7 million victims. The WHO statement comes just days before the US public health emergency expires on May 11.
The alarm in Wuhan
The first meeting of the WHO Covid emergency committee was held in January 2020 on days when the unknown virus initially called Sars-like it was beginning to spread outside China as well. The pathogen, later baptized by the WHO SARS-CoV-2, had been intercepted for the first time in Wuhan, a Chinese city of 11 million inhabitants, even if the real origin has never been clarified. Two emergency hospitals had been built in Wuhan to deal with an epidemic now out of control.
The first dramatic days of the pandemic
While the Chinese authorities began to isolate the affected cities more and more drastically, and in the rest of the world the health authorities raised their alert level and the first WHO Emergency Committee meeting was held on 22 and 23 January 2020. Not even a week later, the January 30, 2020following his second meeting, the director general of the UN health agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declares that the epidemic constitutes aPublic Health Emergency of International Concern (Pheic)accepting the opinion issued in this sense by the Committee. On March 11, 2020, WHO Director-General announces to the world that Covid-19 is a pandemic. Since then, the emergency committee has met regularly every three months. Today, more than three years after those dramatic days, the situation is very different, the virus is still circulating and continues to cause victims, but mitigation measures, drugs and, above all, vaccines have changed the scenario.
The Chinese case and the postponement of the WHO decision
In October 2022, the hypothesis of declaring the end of the pandemic at the next meeting, scheduled for January, was already aired within the World Health Organization. However, even if the virus was already endemic almost all over the world, the decision was blocked by the alarming data from China which, with the mass reopenings, had inaugurated the zero Covid policy which led to a exponential increase in infections and deaths. Nonetheless, the much feared China effect did not occur: no new strains other than Omicron were born and there was no increase in infections in the rest of the world, which is already covered by ahybrid immunity. However, the WHO chose the line of prudence, postponing the decision to the next meeting.
The criteria for declaring an emergency
According to the International Health Regulations, a public health emergency of international concern can be declared in response to a public health event that meets three criteria: theserious event, sudden, unexpected; has the potential to spread beyond borders; requires a coordinated international response. Today the Covid it may still cause serious illness, but it is no longer something sudden or unexpected. Borders have now been crossed, the disease is known worldwide and coordinated international responses are virtually abandoned.
May 5, 2023 (change May 5, 2023 | 4:16 pm)
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