LONDON - Covid-19 no longer represents a global health emergency, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday, a major step towards the end of the pandemic that has killed millions of people, disrupted the global economy and ravaged communities.

The WHO’s emergency committee met on Thursday and recommended the UN agency declare an end to the public health emergency of international concern, which has been in place for more than three years.

“It’s therefore with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, adding that the end of the emergency did not mean Covid-19 was over as a global health threat.

The WHO’s emergency committee first declared that Covid-19 represented its highest level of alert on Jan 30, 2020. The status helps focus international attention on a health threat, as well as bolstering collaboration on vaccines and treatments.

Lifting it is a sign of the progress the world has made in these areas, but Covid-19 is here to stay, the WHO said.

“Covid has changed the world, and it has changed us. And that’s the way it should be. If we go back to how things were before Covid-19, we will have failed to learn our lessons, and failed our future generations,” said Dr Tedros.

During a lengthy conference call to brief the press on the decision, some WHO members became emotional as they urged countries to reflect on lessons learned during the pandemic.

“We can’t forget those fire pyres. We can’t forget the graves that were dug. None of us up here will forget them,” said WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19 Maria Van Kerkhove.

The death rate has slowed from a peak of more than 100,000 people per week in January 2021 to just over 3,500 in the week to April 24, according to WHO data.

Worldwide, as at Wednesday, the disease had officially claimed more than 6.9 million lives and sickened over 765 million others, according to the WHO, but Dr Tedros said on Friday that at least 20 million people were estimated to have been killed by Covid-19 – nearly three times the official number.

To make up for inconsistently collected or incomplete national tolls, researchers have compared the number of excess deaths worldwide since 2020 to the pre-pandemic figures.

For 2020 and 2021, nearly 15 million excess deaths were due to Covid-19, either from the disease itself or indirectly through its impact on society, the WHO said previously. 

In many parts of the world, testing has dwindled dramatically, and people have largely stopped wearing masks. In some countries, mask-wearing mandates have resumed during Covid-19 outbreaks. The WHO published a plan this week advising countries on how to live with Covid-19 long-term.

Covid-19 will continue to challenge health systems worldwide long term, including long COVID, infectious disease experts say. “No one should take (this) to mean Covid-19 is no longer a problem,” said Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh.

“It is still a significant public health problem and looks likely to remain one for the foreseeable future.”

Last week, Mr Patrick Gerland, chief of the UN’s population estimates section, told AFP that it was still waiting on data about 2022 excess deaths from India, which may have been the country with the highest number of fatalities.

The WHO does not declare the beginning or end of pandemics, although it did start using the term for Covid-19 in March 2020. 

In 2022, US President Joe Biden said the pandemic was over.

Like a number of other countries, the world’s biggest economy has begun dismantling its domestic state of emergency for Covid-19, meaning it will stop paying for things such as vaccines.

Other regions have taken similar steps. The European Union said in April 2022 that the emergency phase of the pandemic was over, and the WHO’s African head, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, said in December that it was time to move to routine management of Covid-19 across the continent.

Ending the emergency could mean that international collaboration or funding efforts are also brought to an end or shift in focus, although many have already adapted as the pandemic receded in different regions. REUTERS, AFP