APA-Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) The global coronavirus emergency declared in 2020 after a worldwide outbreak of the deadly disease is now officially over, a statement on Friday by the World Health Organisation suggests.
The WHO said the rate of infection from coronavirus cannot be regarded as a health threat worthy of being treated as an emergency globally.
It means that there is no longer a state of global alert to the pandemic which is at low intensity since the outbreak in December 2019 and a declaration of a health emergency in early 2020.
According to the WHO, the Covid-19 infection rate has dropped to around 3, 500 weekly in the last week of April 2023 from over 100,000 every week at the start of 2021.
The statement quoted the WHO director general Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus as saying the three-year pandemic may have claimed some 20 million lives although the official figure by his the organisation put the death toll much ower at around seven million.
The pandemic had led to worldwide travel and other restrictions, leaving adversely affecting economic growth particularly in developing economies which are still weighed down by its impact.
Dr Ghebreyesus warned that although the rate of infection has tailed off, the virus still carries a significant threat for the world.
The WHO’s decision to declare Covid-19 health emergency over followed Thursday’s meeting of its Emergency Committee, the 15th since the pandemic.
Its members had recommended that the international health emergency be declared over which the WHO DG had accepted but pointed out that it could be restored if the situation with the rate of infection were to deteriorate again.
The WHO chief advised against global complacency which would lead to the pandemic being played down as over and provide a reason ”to lower our guard, dismantle the systems built, or send the message that Covid-19 is nothing to worry about”.
Since the pandemic, tens of millions of people have benefitted from vaccines which were mass produced to ward off or minimise the potency of the virus to do harm.
Under the global vaccine alliance called the COVAX scheme, people in poor countries have been able to access the vaccines.
However vaccine activists claim millions of those in need were still not coveref by the scheme thanks to the unequal distribution of the drugs.