Covid-19 no longer constitutes a global health emergency, the World Health Organization said on Friday, lowering its alert level three years after the novel coronavirus began killing millions as it swept across the world.
The WHO said it was time to transition to long-term management of the pandemic after a panel met on Thursday to discuss the recent evolution of the disease.
The move is largely symbolic, given that most countries have returned to normal social behaviours, relaxing lockdowns and masking guidelines while reopening borders to travel.
The United States is preparing to end its declared public health emergency on May 11 as Covid infections return to levels seen at the beginning of the outbreak in 2020.
Covid has resulted in at least 20 million deaths worldwide, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday, adding that last week it was still killing one person every three minutes.
The WHO had declared Covid-19 a public health emergency of international concern in late January 2020, as infections began spreading from the original epicentre of Wuhan, China. At the time, there was still considerable uncertainty about the disease’s deadliness and how infections were transmitted.
The emergency status known as PHEIC — pronounced “fake” and standing for Public Health Emergency of International Concern — applies to an extraordinary event that carries a public-health risk via the global spread of a disease, and one that potentially requires a coordinated response.
The WHO is still using the word “pandemic” to describe the disease, and Tedros highlighted the risk that Covid-19 becomes more dangerous again through mutations.
“This virus is here to stay,” he said. “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.”
Tedros said he wouldn’t hesitate if necessary to reconvene an emergency committee if Covid-19 would start to become a bigger global danger again.
