Covid ‘no longer a global emergency’, says World Health Organisation

“It‘s with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency,” World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.

“That does not mean Covid-19 is over as a global health threat.”

In May last year, WHO experts said the end of the pandemic was “in sight”, publishing policy briefs for governments to follow on infection control, testing, vaccination and misinformation.

“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,” Mr 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.”

Still a threat

Covid-19 was declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, triggering lockdowns and travel restrictions across the world.

There have been more than six million Covid-related deaths worldwide since then.

The peak of the pandemic in terms was in December 2020. But as vaccines rolled out and people exposed to Covid built up immunity case numbers fell.

Cases numbers are deaths are now low but thousands still die each week from the virus.

Executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program Dr Mike Ryan said Covid-19 remained a “threat”.

“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.

“So, we fully expect that this virus will continue to transmit, but this is the history of pandemics.

“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,” he added.

A new subvariant of Omicron was detected in Australia earlier this year.

XBB. 1.16 was first detected in NSW in February this year, with infections slowly rising.

The WHO assessed this strain as “low risk” on a global scale, compared with others currently in circulation.

However, the strain was designated a variant of interest by WHO earlier this month, as cases surged in India.

Tragedy

Mr Tedros said there was a “tragedy” in how Covid was handled globally.

“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 co-ordination, a lack of equity, and lack of solidarity meant that those tools were not used as effectively as they could have been.

“We must promise ourselves and our children and grandchildren that we will never make those mistakes again”.