WHO Downgrades COVID Pandemic, Says It's No Longer Emergency

 

FILE - On February 10, 2023, a woman is seen leaving a COVID-19 testing facility at the Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea.

SharePoint

The horrific coronavirus epidemic that prompted previously unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies, and killed millions of people worldwide was symbolically brought to an end on Friday when the World Health Organisation declared that COVID-19 no longer meets the criteria for a global emergency.

The statement provides a conclusion to a pandemic that stoked fear and distrust, hand-wringing, and finger-pointing around the world. It was made more than three years after WHO designated the coronavirus an international disaster.

Officials from the U.N. health agency noted recent surges in cases in Southeast Asia and the Middle East as evidence that the pandemic hasn't stopped despite the emergency phase being completed.

According to the WHO, the virus continues to claim the lives of thousands of people each week, and millions more continue to experience its disabling, long-lasting effects.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated, "It is with great hope that I declare COVID-19 to be over as a global health emergency."

"That does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat," he said, adding that he wouldn't hesitate to call another meeting of experts to review the issue should a new version "put our world in peril."

Tedros acknowledged that most nations had already resumed their normal lives prior to COVID-19 and noted that the epidemic had been on a declining trend for more than a year.

He lamented the harm COVID-19 had caused to the world community, claiming that the pandemic had destroyed enterprises, widened political rifts, stoked the propagation of rumours, and driven millions into poverty.

In some nations, the political backlash came quickly and harshly. Inaccuracies in President Donald Trump's administration's handling of the pandemic, according to some analysts, contributed to his failure to win reelection in 2020. More than 1 million people perished as a result of the deadliest outbreak of any nation in the world, which occurred in the United States.

A comprehensive pandemic treaty must be negotiated by heads of state and other leaders, according to Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO's emergency management chief, in order to determine how future health threats should be addressed.

Ryan emphasized that some COVID-19 scenarios, in which people resorted to "bartering for oxygen canisters," battled for entrance to emergency rooms, and perished in parking lots because they were unable to receive treatment, must never occur again.

On January 30, 2020, the U.N. health agency initially labeled the coronavirus an international issue, but it had not yet been given the name COVID-19 and there had been no significant outbreaks outside of China.

Over three years later, the virus is thought to have resulted in 764 million cases throughout the world, and 5 billion individuals have at least one dosage of the vaccination.

On May 11, the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration will come to an end in the United States, along with a number of other pandemic response measures, such as vaccine mandates. Many other nations last year abandoned the majority of their precautions against the pandemic, including Germany, France, and Britain.

In 2020, Tedros proclaimed COVID-19 to be an emergency, and he expressed concern that the virus would spread to nations with underdeveloped healthcare systems.

In fact, the United States and Britain, two of the nations with the highest COVID-19 death rates, were previously deemed to be among the best-prepared nations for a pandemic. Data from the WHO show that only 3% of all recorded deaths worldwide occur in Africa.

When the virus had spread to all continents except Antarctica in March 2020, WHO, which doesn't "declare" pandemics, was the first to use the term to characterize the outbreak, long after many other scientists had claimed one was already in progress.

The sole organization tasked with coordinating the global response to serious health risks is WHO, yet as the coronavirus spread, the group struggled repeatedly.

Even though recordings of private conversations acquired by The Associated Press revealed top officials were upset with China's lack of cooperation, WHO publicly praised China in January 2020 for its alleged prompt and transparent reaction.

For months, WHO advised against masks used by the general people, an error that many health professionals claim resulted in the loss of life.

Additionally, many experts criticized WHO for being reluctant to accept that COVID-19 was routinely distributed through the air and by healthy individuals, as well as for the agency's lack of robust guidelines to prevent such exposure.

The world was on the verge of a "catastrophic moral failure" if doses weren't shared with poor countries, warned Tedros, as wealthy nations hoarded the restricted COVID-19 vaccination supplies.

Most lately, WHO has struggled to look into the coronavirus's origins, a difficult scientific activity that has also grown politically contentious.

WHO published a report in 2021 after a lengthy trip to China that came to the conclusion that COVID-19 most likely entered humans from animals and labeled the probability that it originated in a lab as "extremely unlikely."