The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday declared COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency of international concern, reported Reuters. It said that the virus, which took the lives of millions of people in a span of three years.
It is “with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency”, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
The UN health agency first declared COVID-19 public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) over the crisis on January 30, 2020.
According to the WHO, at least seven million people died in the pandemic. But, Mr. Tedros estimated that the pandemic had killed at least 20 million people, nearly three times the fewer than seven million deaths officially recorded and he warned that the virus remained a significant threat.
The announcement that Covid-19 was no longer a public health emergency was made after the WHO’s independent emergency committee on the COVID-19 crisis meeting on Thursday. The committee finally decided that the health crisis no longer needs to be merited the highest level of alert.
Tedros, however, warned that the declarations did not mean the danger was over. He said the health body could reinstate the emergency status if the situation changes. He cautioned that a lot of countries have slowed down testing and tracing efforts, making it more difficult to track known variants and detect new ones.
“The worst thing any country could do now is to use this news as a reason to let down its guard, to dismantle the systems it has built, or to send the message to its people that COVID-19 is nothing to worry about,” he said.
Last week, the WHO said that the number of coronavirus deaths globally had dropped 95 percent since January this year, but the deadly virus still killed 16,000 people worldwide last month alone.
