Global Courant 2023-05-05 19:09:16
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), speaks at a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, December 20, 2021.
Denis Balibouse | Reuters
The spread of Covid-19 is no longer a global public health emergency, the World Health Organization declared on Friday.
“For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend with population immunity increasing through vaccination and infection, mortality rates decreasing and pressure on health systems easing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Geneva. .
“This trend has brought most countries back to life as we knew it before Covid-19,” Tedros said.
“It is therefore with great hope that I have declared Covid-19 a global health emergency,” he said.
According to the UN agency’s official data, nearly 7 million people worldwide have died from the virus since the WHO first declared an emergency on January 30, 2020. Tedros said the true death toll is at least 20 million.
The WHO decision comes as the US plans to end a national public health emergency on May 11.
Tedros said there is still a risk of a new variant emerging and causing a new wave of cases. He warned national governments against dismantling the systems they built to fight the virus.
“This virus is here to stay. It’s still deadly and it’s still changing,” he said.
But the head of WHO said it is time for countries to move from an emergency response to managing Covid like other infectious diseases.
Covid first emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019, when several patients began experiencing symptoms of pneumonia of unknown cause.
More than three years later, the origin of the virus is still a hotly contested mystery. Scientists, government officials and the general public continue to debate whether Covid passed to humans through an infected animal or leaked from a lab in China.
The US intelligence community is divided in its assessment of the origins of Covid.
The US government, allied nations and WHO have criticized the Chinese government for not providing transparent access to data that could help determine how the pandemic started.
This is an evolving story. Check back later for updates.
CNBC Health and Science
Read the latest global health coverage from CNBC:
(TagsToTranslate)Breaking News: Business
