GENEVA — Is the COVID-19 pandemic about to end?
The World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations, deserved to finalize the declaration of global emergency of physical exercise issued on January 30, 2020, just six weeks before flagging COVID-19 as a pandemic.
On Friday, a WHO emergency committee will discuss whether to propose to the agency’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to lift the so-called COVID-19 public health emergency of foreign interest, according to a STAT report.
But the Boston-based medical journalism publication said the end of the emergency order “would not be a declaration that COVID no longer poses a risk to the world, nor would it constitute a declaration through the WHO that the pandemic is over. “
That’s because the WHO doesn’t have a mechanism to officially declare when a pandemic begins or ends, STAT said, though Tedros’ announcement on March 11, 2020, that COVID-19 is a pandemic is widely regarded as a formal statement.
“We don’t claim pandemics,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s top coronavirus expert, told STAT.
In the United States, President Joe Biden said the COVID-19 pandemic was over in an interview last September. Administration officials later said that Biden referred to Americans’ attitude toward the virus and that it remains a serious concern.
Under a foreign fitness regulatory treaty, a declaration of a global fitness emergency gives WHO the strength to consider transient recommendations to countries, even if they are not followed.
In addition to COVID-19, emergency declarations have been made for outbreaks around the world, with H1N1 flu, Ebola, Zika, polio, and mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, added. Most of those reports ended once transmission of the disease was largely stopped. .
Tedros, who has the final say on what will happen with the COVID-19 global physical health emergency order, gave the impression of recommending at the WHO’s weekly press briefing on Tuesday that he may not yet be in a position to see it go away. .
“Although I anticipate the opinion of the emergency committee, I remain very concerned about the scenario in many countries and the growing number of deaths,” the director-general told reporters.
“While we are obviously at more than we were three years ago, when this pandemic first hit, the global collective reaction is once again being tense,” he said, calling the actual death toll “much higher” than the 170,000 lives believed to have died. lost globally during the last 8 weeks.
The world’s most populous country, China, is believed to be underestimating the effect of a large virus outbreak following the government’s recent resolution to abruptly abandon strict “zero COVID” policies.