WHO declares Covid-19 no longer global emergency
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency. After killing approximately 7 million people around the world, the organization sees this as an important step in ending the pandemic that has disrupted the global economy.
In January 2020, WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic, which helped focus international attention on the health threat and strengthened cooperation on vaccines and treatments. However, the Emergency Committee of WHO announced that the pandemic is no longer a global emergency, although this does not mean that Covid-19 has ended as a global health threat.
According to WHO data, the global death rate due to Covid-19 has slowed from 100,000 a week in January 2021 to 3,500 a week from 24 April 2023. WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that Covid-19 has changed the world and changed us too, and if we go back to pre-Covid-19, we would not have learned our lessons and disappointed our future generations.
Other countries have taken similar steps to declare the pandemic over; last year, US President Joe Biden said that the pandemic is over, while in April 2020, the European Union (EU) announced the end of the emergency phase of the pandemic. However, the pandemic is still ongoing, with new variants of the virus emerging, and experts warn that vaccination efforts must continue to control the spread and prevent future outbreaks.
