WHO officially calls for an end to the COVID-19 global health emergency

May 5, 2023 – The World Health Organization (WHO) makes it official by announcing the end of the global health emergency more than 3 years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Not much is expected to change in a realistic sense, and the statement does not mean that COVID is no longer with us.

But the WHO’s call to end its “public health emergency of international concern” reflects falling case numbers, lower hospitalizations and greater immunity.

We’ve come a long way since the agency first declared COVID an emergency on January 30, 2020 and a pandemic on March 11 of the same year. Before celebrating, however, take a moment to reflect on the global impact of COVID. The WHO says more than 765 million cases of COVID have been reported worldwide, including nearly 7 million deaths.

“But we know that [death] the toll is many times higher, at least 20 million,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said at a press conference today. “Last week, COVID-19 claimed lives every 3 minutes.”

“What this news means is that it’s time for countries to move from emergency mode to managing COVID-19 alongside other infectious diseases,” he said.

The US government is expected to follow suit and allow its public health emergency to expire on May 11. In practice, this will likely mean the end of free home COVID test kits and full insurance coverage for lab tests and other public health issues. measures.