The World Health Organization has announced that it was downgrading COVID from its previous status as a public health emergency of international concern, but noted that the pandemic is still not over. Recent spikes have occurred in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and the agency warns that thousands of people a day are still dying from the virus. It also made a number of recommendations for national healthcare systems to maintain the gains made against the virus and for pandemic preparedness.
The WHO’s International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) Emergency Committee had been following the decline in hospital and ICU missions along with the growth of immunity, and decided in its meeting on Thursday 4 May that it was time to recommend a transition to long-term management.
“It’s with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, concurring the Committee’s advice.
“That does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat,” he said, adding he wouldn’t hesitate to reconvene experts to reassess the situation should COVID-19 “put our world in peril.”
He also expressed concern that even though infections were down, COVID-19 surveillance was falling.
While various governments had been transitioning down for a while, this marks a major step for the WHO. The virus killed millions and sent the global economy into a nosedive, plunging millions more into poverty and reversing many decades of socioeconomic development.
While COVID was no longer considered to be an ongoing global threat, the WHO made number of recommendations for countries:
Sustain the national capacity gains and prepare for future events.
Integrate COVID-19 vaccination into life course vaccination programmes.
Bring together information from diverse respiratory pathogen surveillance data sources to allow for a comprehensive situational awareness.
Prepare for medical countermeasures to be authourised within national regulatory frameworks to ensure long-term availability and supply.
Continue to work with communities and their leaders to achieve strong, resilient, and inclusive risk communications and community engagement (RCCE) and infodemic management programmes.
Continue to lift COVID-19 international travel related health measures
Continue to support COVID-19 research.
Source: NPR
