WHO says Covid-19 still a global health emergency
Geneva, Jan 30 (EFE).- The World Health Organization warned on Monday that Covid-19 remains an international health emergency and continues to be “a dangerous infectious disease” that can cause considerable damage to people’s health and healthcare systems worldwide.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, made the statements after the United Nations health agency’s emergency committee on Covid-19 met on Friday for the 14th time since the health crisis started in 2020.
Although Tedros acknowledged that the pandemic had entered a “transition” phase he said that Covid-19 “continues to constitute a public health emergency of international concern.”
“While the world is in a better position than it was during the peak of the Omicron transmission one year ago, more than 170,000 Covid-19-related deaths have been reported globally within the last eight weeks,” he said, according to a report published by WHO on Monday.
The agency meeting came as this week marks the three-year anniversary since WHO sounded the global alarm over the health risks Covid-19 posed.
Although Covid-19 has not officially been downgraded from its status as a PHEIC — public health emergency of international concern — most nations have shelved the most restrictive measures that were once in place in a bid to contain the spread of the infectious disease.
China has been the most recent country to lift all pandemic measures in December after its stringent zero Covid policy kept the country isolated with its borders closed, and citizens abiding by strict confinement measures and regular testing and tracking.
Following a sharp rise in infections and deaths as Beijing opened up again and relaxed Covid rules, caseloads are now declining steadily, according to the most recent data published by China’s National Health Commission.
Although the UN committee agreed the pandemic has reached an “inflection point,” the WHO chief warned that the emergency phase of the health crisis was not over and said that the global response to the pandemic “remains hobbled” in many countries that are not able to provide the tools populations need.
He added that to move past the PHEIC “long-term public health action is critically needed” with the understanding that it is unlikely that the virus will be eliminated from “human and animal reservoirs.”
Moving forward, the emergency committee recommended that WHO and its partners should “develop a proposal for alternative mechanisms to maintain the global and national focus on Covid-19 after the PHEIC is terminated.”
Tedros recalled that many countries still lack sufficient vaccines and treatments to care for patients and that many health networks in low-income countries continue to suffer the burden of Covid-19 infections.
An example of this is Nigeria, which on Monday reported that 30% of its population had been vaccinated for Covid-19. The figure may seem low but just a year ago vaccination rates barely reached 3%. EFE
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