The World Well being Group on Wednesday stated that COVID-19 stays a pandemic and a public well being emergency of worldwide concern.
“Whereas the worldwide state of affairs has clearly improved for the reason that pandemic started, the virus continues to vary, and there stay many dangers and uncertainties,” WHO Director-Common Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated at a press briefing on Wednesday. “This pandemic has stunned us earlier than and really properly might once more.”
Tedros stated that he accepted the advice to maintain the general public well being emergency of worldwide concern declaration from WHO’s emergency committee for COVID-19, which met final week.
Cartoons on the Coronavirus
“The committee emphasised the necessity to strengthen surveillance and broaden entry to exams, therapies and vaccines for these most at-risk, and for all international locations to replace their nationwide preparedness and response plans,” Tedros stated.
Whereas WHO has been adamant that the pandemic is just not over, Tedros has stated that the tip is in sight.
However the group doesn’t determine whether or not an outbreak is a pandemic or not. As an alternative, it decides if occasions are a public well being emergency of worldwide concern, which it declared for COVID-19 in January 2020.
The committee did, nevertheless, focus on for the primary time the potential for terminating the emergency declaration, citing declining deaths and growing immunity ranges, in response to Didier Houssin, who’s the chair of WHO’s emergency committee for COVID-19. However he stated it’s nonetheless “too early” to finish the declaration provided that deaths stay elevated and uncertainties stay.
Houssin stated that the committee selected preliminary steps wanted earlier than it might elevate the declaration, together with watching how winter performs within the Northern Hemisphere and analyzing how ending the declaration would have an effect on entry to vaccines and therapies.