'COVID No Longer Global Public Health Emergency', Declares WHO

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The COVID-19 infection is no longer a global public health emergency, the World Health Organization declared on Friday, 5 May.

“For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend with population immunity increasing from vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing, and the pressure on health systems easing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Geneva.

“This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before COVID-19,” Tedros added.

'Time For Countries to Transition'

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

The WHO chief added that while this Emergency Committee will now cease its work, it has sent a clear message that countries must not cease theirs.

The pandemic took the lives of nearly 7 million people have died from the virus worldwide since the WHO first declared the emergency on 30 January 2020. Tedros, however, said the the true death toll is at least 20 million.