The World Health Organization has put an end to the global Covid health emergency-19 on Friday, saying the time has come for countries to move from treating Covid as an emergency to oneDeal with it as a disease destined to stay. The decision was made on the advice of a committee of independent experts, the so-called Covid-19 emergency committee, which met on Thursday. “It is … with great hope that I declare that Covid-19 has ended as a global health emergency,” said the WHO director-general. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a press conference from Geneva. He warned, however, that the threat posed by the virus remains.
The Covid-19 public health emergency of international concern has been in force since 30 January 2020. Since the beginning of the pandemic, WHO estimates chand at least 20 million people worldwide have died from the new disease. The WHO statement comes just days before the US public health emergency expires on May 11.
The alarm in Wuhan
The first meeting of the WHO Covid emergency committee was held in January 2020 on days when the unknown virus initially called Sars-like it was beginning to spread outside China as well. The pathogen, later baptized by the WHO Sars-CoV-2, had been intercepted for the first time in Wuhan, a Chinese city of 11 million inhabitants even if the real origin has never been clarified. Two emergency hospitals had been built in Wuhan to deal with an epidemic now out of control.
The first dramatic days of the pandemic
While the Chinese authorities began to isolate the affected cities more and more drastically, and in the rest of the world the health authorities raised their alert level and the first WHO Emergency Committee meeting was held on 22 and 23 January 2020. Not even a week later, the January 30, 2020following his second meeting, the director general of the UN health agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declares that the epidemic constitutes aPublic Health Emergency of International Concern (Pheic)accepting the opinion issued in this sense by the Committee. On March 11, 2020, WHO Director-General announces to the world that Covid-19 is a pandemic. Since then, the emergency committee has met on a regular basis every three months. Today, more than three years after those dramatic days, the situation is very different, the virus is still circulating and continues to cause victims, but mitigation measures, drugs and, above all, vaccines have changed the scenario.
The Chinese case and the postponement of the WHO decision
In October 2022, the hypothesis of declaring the end of the pandemic at the next meeting, scheduled for January, was already aired within the World Health Organization. However, even if the virus was already endemic almost all over the world, the decision was blocked by the alarming data from China which, with the mass reopenings, had inaugurated the zero Covid policy which led to a exponential increase in infections and deaths. Nonetheless, the much feared China effect did not occur: no new strains other than Omicron were born and there was no increase in infections in the rest of the world, already covered by ahybrid immunity. However, the WHO chose the line of prudence, postponing the decision to the next meeting.
The criteria for declaring an emergency
According to the International Health Regulations, a public health emergency of international concern can be declared in response to a public health event that meets three criteria: theevent is serious, sudden, unexpected; has the potential to spread beyond borders; requires a coordinated international response. Today the Covid it can still cause serious illness, but it is no longer something sudden or unexpected. Borders have now been crossed, the disease is known around the world and coordinated international responses are virtually abandoned.
However, the Chinese situation had put a stop to WHO’s initial intentions to declare the Covid emergency over, which was discussed at the previous October meeting of the safety committee. Today, however, hesitations have been overcome