Rabat – COVID-19 no longer constitutes a “global health emergency,” the World Health Organization (WHO) declared on Friday.
The announcement comes more than three years after the UN health agency declared its highest level of alert over the devastating virus that triggered widespread lockdowns, economic disruption, and killed millions of people around the world.
The WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, made the declaration after the body’s Emergency Committee recommended it to him, according to converging reports.
Despite no longer qualifying as a global health emergency, the pandemic has not come to an end, Ghebreyesus acknowledged. The WHO warned that recent spikes in cases in Southeast Asia and the Middle East show that COVID-19 still poses a global health threat, with thousands of people dying from the virus every week.
Tedros said that he would not hesitate to reconvene experts to reassess the situation should the coronavirus “put our world in peril.”
The WHO’s highest level of alert helps focus international attention on a health threat and bolsters global collaboration on vaccines and treatments.
Since the WHO declared the coronavirus to be a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, the virus has caused an estimated 764 million deaths globally, and about 5 billion people have received at least one dose of a vaccine.
However, the risk of new variants remains, and the WHO has warned that COVID-19 is still a significant threat to public health.
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