By Ebi Kesiena
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that the COVID-19 pandemic, which for over three years killed millions of people, wreaked economic havoc and deepened inequalities, no longer constitutes a global health emergency.
World Health Organization Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that it was with great optimism to declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency.
The UN health agency estimates that the pandemic had killed “at least 20 million” people – nearly three times the under seven million deaths officially recorded.
The move came after the WHO’s independent emergency committee on the COVID crisis agreed during its 15th meeting on Thursday, that the crisis no longer merited the organization’s highest level of alert.
But, Tedros warned, the decision did not mean the danger was over, cautioning that the emergency status could be reinstated if the situation changes.
“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.
The U.N. health agency first declared the so-called public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) over the crisis on January 30, 2020.
But it was only after Tedros described the worsening COVID situation as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, that many countries woke up to the danger.
The WHO said last week that COVID deaths globally had plunged 95 percent since January, but the disease still killed 16,000 people worldwide last month alone.
Despite the lingering danger, the pandemic has faded from mind in many if not most countries.
Tedros warned Thursday that testing and tracing efforts have “declined significantly around the world, making it more difficult to track known variants and detect new ones”.
The virus was first detected in late 2019 in Wuhan China, but it remains unclear how and where it first began spreading among humans.
The issue, which has been heavily politicized, has proved divisive for the scientific community, which are split between a theory that the virus jumped naturally to humans from animals and one maintaining that the virus likely leaked from a Wuhan laboratory – a claim China has angrily denied.
Beijing stands accused of obstruction and has ignored repeated WHO requests for more access and information to help solve the mystery.
