The World Health Organization (WHO) lifted this Friday (05) the international emergency due to Covid-19, which had been declared since January 30, 2020, given the notable reduction in serious cases and deaths globally, but without declaring end of the pandemic for this disease. In our country, the Ministry of Health provided its weekly report on the epidemiological situation of the coronavirus in Paraguay that same day, reporting almost 150 new cases and one death.
The decision was announced by the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, after the organization’s emergency committee met this Thursday to analyze the current situation of the pandemic, which in more than three years has affected at least 765 million people and has caused the death of about 20 million.
Since the beginning of the year, the number of coronavirus infections and reported deaths has been decreasing globally: in the last week of April, the WHO confirmed 630,000 cases worldwide and 3,500 deaths, when in January there were more than 1.3 million of positives and the 14,000 deaths, partly due to the wave in China.
Situation in Paraguay
The MSPB report corresponds to epidemiological week 17, from April 23 to 29, 2023, where 4,196 samples were processed, of which 148 yielded positive results for Covid-19, reaching a total of 809,955 infections of the disease since the start of the pandemic. A new death was also registered, reaching 19,921 deaths related to the pandemic disease. The report also includes 13 patients hospitalized for Covid-19, none of them in intensive care.