After almost three years of a global fight against Covid-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that the pandemic no longer constitutes a global health emergency. The WHO had initially classified Covid-19 as a public health emergency of international concern on January 30th, 2020, and had continued to maintain this status at tri-monthly meetings. However, the head of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, emphasized that the pandemic remains a persistent threat as it continues to claim a life every three minutes.
While the world has made significant progress in fighting Covid-19, Tedros warned that this does not mean the end of the pandemic. Rather, health officials believe that Covid-19 is here to stay. The World Health Organization has lifted the global health emergency status, demonstrating that progress has been made in the development of vaccines and treatment strategies.Due to this classification, international attention was focused on the severity of the pandemic and collaboration was spurred to address it.
Tedros emphasized that they had not taken the decision to downgrade the alert status lightly and warned that they could reinstate the emergency status if the situation changed. In March 2020, the WHO began using the term Covid-19 to refer to the pandemic but does not declare the beginning or end of the epidemic. Tedros’s announcement serves as a reminder that while the world may have made significant strides in combating Covid-19, the pandemic remains a threat that needs