Global health says COVID-19 pandemic is over amid virus origin questions
Jessica Dobrinsky Harris
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After three long years, the COVID-19 global health emergency is over.
So says the World Health Organization, which made that declaration on May 5. WHO is the sole agency tasked with orchestrating global responses to health threats. And WHO says that while the coronavirus pandemic is not entirely over, with recent spikes in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, the situation is no longer a global emergency.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION DOWNGRADES COVID-19 FROM GLOBAL EMERGENCY
That marks a major milestone since the emergence of the virus. The announcement comes more than three years after the pandemic began in early 2020, resulting in 1,124,063 U.S. deaths from confirmed cases. In 2022, COVID-19 was the fourth leading cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Globally, the pandemic triggered several social and economic disruptions, including widespread supply and food shortages.
But the rapid fall in cases led WHO to call an end to the pandemic. After having declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Jan. 30, 2020, the WHO began referring to it as a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
“This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before COVID-19. It’s with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
In a press conference, Tedros said the pandemic has been on a consistent downward trend for over a year. It’s a change in tone from the height of the pandemic when the director-general fiercely fought countries who hoarded COVID-19 vaccines, warning of “catastrophic moral failure.”
“That does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat,” he added, “This virus is here to stay. It’s still killing, and it’s still changing.”
When the United Nations first declared COVID-19 an international crisis in January 2020, there were no major outbreaks outside of China. However, after three years, the virus has caused an estimated 764 million cases globally and more than 6 million deaths globally. Millions of others report they still suffer from the long-term effects of the virus.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, said, “There’s still a public health threat out there, and we all see that every day in terms of the evolution of this virus, in terms of its global presence, its continued evolution and continued vulnerabilities in our communities, both societal vulnerabilities, age vulnerabilities, protection vulnerabilities, and many other things. So, we fully expect that this virus will continue to transmit.”
And WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, warned COVID-19 could still be a threat.
“While we’re not in crisis mode, we can’t let our guard down,” Van Kerkhove said. The disease is “here to stay.”
According to WHO, over 13 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered around the globe.
WHO’s decision to conclude the emergency status comes days before the U.S. public health emergency declaration expires on May 11. The U.S. public health emergency’s expiration would mark the end of a significant number of measures that bolstered pandemic response, including some vaccine mandates and free testing.
WHO has been controversial in some quarters since the pandemic began. Many have considered the organization a contributor to its longevity and severity. It got involved in the politically thorny issue of the virus’s origins, including potentially a Chinese lab.
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After a visit to China in 2021, WHO released a report that concluded COVID-19 likely came from animals but shortly backtracked, stating “key pieces of data” were still missing and, therefore, conceded the possibility of its origination from a lab leak.
And in January 2020, WHO praised China for its speedy and transparent responses. Meanwhile, private meetings obtained by the Associated Press showed top officials were frustrated with China’s lack of cooperation on the issue.