The World Health Organization ended the global emergency status for COVID-19 on Friday more than three years after its original declaration, and said countries should now manage the virus that killed more than 6.9 million people along with other infectious diseases.
“For more than a year the pandemic has been on a downward trend,” Tedros said at a news conference Friday.
“It is with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency,” said the W.H.O. director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
But W.H.O. officials warned that the decision to lift the emergency does not signal an end to the pandemic, and cautioned countries not take this as reason to dismantle Covid response systems. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the W.H.O. technical lead on Covid, said the organization wanted to be as clear as possible knowing that people would wonder how to think about the pandemic going forward.
