Covid-19: WHO announces the end of the global emergency

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Extract from the article: The World Health Organization (WHO) lifted its highest alert level on the Covid-19 pandemic on Friday 5 May 2023. WHO believes that it was now sufficiently under control. The devastating pandemic that has triggered once unthinkable lockdowns, disrupt

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The World Health Organization (WHO) lifted its highest alert level on the Covid-19 pandemic on Friday 5 May 2023. WHO believes that it was now sufficiently under control. The devastating pandemic that has triggered once unthinkable lockdowns, disrupted economies around the world and killed at least 7 million people worldwide.

« It is with great hope that I declare that Covid-19 is no longer a health emergency of international concern », said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, estimating that the pandemic had killed "at least 20 million" people, almost three times the official death toll of his organization.

« For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend, with population immunity increasing through vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing and pressure on health systems easing. This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we once knew it », the WHO director general said.

« This does not mean that COVID-19 is over as a threat to global health », he said, adding that he would not hesitate to convene experts again to reassess the situation if the disease "puts our world at risk.

COVID-19 is still causing deaths and hospitalizations in this country, although in smaller numbers than before.

There are the effects of the long COVID that are both little known yet and very significant. The pandemic has been on a downward trend for more than a year, recognizing that most countries were already back to where they were before. He lamented the damage that Covid-19 has done to the global community: the virus has destroyed businesses and plunged millions into poverty. Covid has changed the world, but the risk of new variants remains.

The decline observed for more than a year has led the WHO to announce the end of the maximum alert it had declared for the pandemic. Most countries have been able to « return to life as we knew it before », said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

As of April 30, a total of more than 13.3 billion doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide.

Jean ELI