A few more weeks, or a few months, and Covid will be officially considered endemic and no longer pandemic, and consequently treated as a normal flu.
“I am confident that at some point this year we will be able to say that Covid is over as a public health emergency of international concern and as a pandemic.” This was stated by the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “The number of weekly deaths being reported is now lower than when we first used the word ‘pandemic’ three years ago. The improvement is significant” continued the WHO number one.
End of pandemic
WHO has repeatedly stated that in the next few months of this year the declaration of the end of Pheic could arrive (public health emergency of international concern), the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control has chosen to strike the latest Omicrons from the list of variants of concern, Johns Hopkins University has stopped its famous counting of the various rumors of the pandemic at world level.
The shadows remain over China
“Even if we are increasingly hopeful about the end of the Covid pandemic” not far away, “the question of how it started remains unanswered”, underlines the WHO director, adding: “We continue to ask the Chinese to be transparent in sharing data, to conduct the necessary investigations and to share the results. Understanding how the Covid-19 pandemic began remains both a moral and a scientific imperative.”
His words refer in particular to a recent episode. “In recent days – explains the Dg – WHO has been made aware of data published at the end of January in the Gisaid database”, where the viral sequences are uploaded, “and recently removed again. The data, from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, refer to samples taken at the Huanan market in Wuhan in 2020″, therefore at the beginning of the pandemic. “While online, scientists from different countries downloaded the data and analyzed it. As soon as we learned of this data, we contacted the Chinese CDC and urged them to share it with WHO and the international scientific community so that it can be analyzed,” continues DG Tedros.
“We also convened the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (Sago), which met on Tuesday – he continues -. And we asked researchers from China’s CDC and international group of scientists to present their data analyzes at Sago.” These data, he points out, “do not provide a definitive answer to the question of how the pandemic started, but every piece, every piece of data is important to get us closer to that answer. And any data related to the study of the origins of Covid-19 must be shared immediately with the international community. This data could have – and should have – been shared three years ago,” warns the WHO chief.
Minister Schillaci: “Reassuring numbers”
On the declaration of the end of the pandemic, “we are waiting, and if WHO takes this decision we will follow it. On the other hand, the numbers are absolutely reassuring”. The Minister of Health said, Horace Schillaci, on the sidelines of the inauguration of the new headquarters and first simulation and training center in Rome of the Italian Society of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care. The minister added that for some time “in many other states or nations they have been proceeding to no longer count the cases of Covid”, underlining that “when at the beginning of my mandate I proposed the weekly count all hell broke loose, this it shows that we were right. Let’s see what the WHO says, we continue to closely follow the evolution of the disease”. Of course, “in recent months we have acted in the interests of citizens and we will continue to do so”.