WHO seeks to end Covid-19 emergency

Nearly 650 million confirmed Covid-19 cases and over 6.6 million deaths have been reported to the WHO, though the UN health agency acknowledges this as a vast undercount

Health Correspondent

During the third anniversary of the original Covid-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said the virus is here to stay, but needs managing alongside other respiratory illnesses.

The organization said it hoped that Covid-19 would no longer be a public health emergency this year, as it urged China to share information that could identify how the pandemic started WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus said the weekly Covid-19 death toll is now around a fifth of what it was a year ago, but still too high.

“Recently less than 10 000 people lost their lives, that is still too many and there is still a lot that all countries can do to save lives. But we have come a long way, we hope that at some point we will be able to say Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency,” he said.

The WHO emergency committee on Covid-19, which advises Tedros on whether the virus constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), will discuss the criteria for declaring an end to the emergency phase when they meet this month.

WHO Covid-19 technical leader Maria Van Kerkhove said the committee would look at the epidemiology, variants like Omicron and the impact of the virus.

“While waves of infection are still expected, the pandemic is not what it was in the beginning, with cases resulting in fewer hospitalisations and deaths. These deaths are largely among people who are not vaccinated, or have not received their full course of jabs,” Van Kerkhove said.

She added that while the WHO says more than 13 billion vaccine doses have been administered, about 30 percent of the world has not received a single dose.

Nearly 650 million confirmed Covid-19 cases and over 6.6 million deaths have been reported to the WHO, though the UN health agency acknowledges this as a vast undercount.

Tedros said that as the world looks to end the Covid-19 emergency, which has upended economies and left millions suffering ongoing symptoms, it needs to understand how the pandemic began. The first cases of Covid-19 were recorded in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.

“We continue to call on China to share the data and conduct the studies we have requested, to better understand the origins of this virus. All hypotheses remain on the table, including the theory that the virus escaped from Wuhan’s virology laboratories,” Tedros said.

WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan said the organisation could not stop engaging with Beijing, as a huge chunk of the world’s population live in China.

Tedros said the virus had been around so long, it was almost part of the family. “This virus will not go away. It’s here to stay and all countries will need to learn to manage it alongside other respiratory illnesses,” he said.

WHO vaccines chief Kate O’Brien said the current crop of Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent people from catching the virus to the level that had been hoped for.

“We would love to have vaccines that are more effective against infection and transmission and have greater duration of protection. We call for more investment in research and development,” she said.

On Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, Tedros said the global outbreak had taken the world by surprise. More than 82 000 cases have been reported from 110 countries, although the mortality rate has remained low, with 65 deaths.

“But like Covid-19, the emergency phase should be over within 12 months. Thankfully the number of weekly cases has declined more than 90 percent since we declared a PHEIC in July,” said Tedros.