The World Health Organization said the Covid-19 pandemic could calm down this year to the point of becoming a flu-like threat.
WHO has expressed confidence that it can declare the emergency over in 2023, adding that it is increasingly optimistic that the virus is approaching its pandemic stage, reports RTE.
Last weekend it was three years since the United Nations health agency first described it as a pandemic, even as WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted that countries should enter into action several weeks earlier.
“I think we’re coming to that point where we can look at Covid-19 in the same way we look at seasonal influenza,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a press conference,” reports RTE.
The WHO chief said the world was in a much better position now than at any time during the pandemic.
“I am confident that this year we will be able to say that Covid-19 is over as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC),” he said, reports RTE.
WHO declared a PHEIC on January 30, 2020 “the highest alarm level it can sound“ when fewer than 100 cases and no deaths have occurred outside of China.
But on March 11 of that year, when Dr. Tedros described the worsening situation as a pandemic, many countries seemed to have realized the threat.
“We declared a global health emergency to spur countries to take decisive action, but not all countries did,” he said today, reports RTE.
He was heartened that for the first time the weekly number of deaths reported in the past four weeks was lower than when he first described COVID-19 as a pandemic.
But he said that with more than 5,000 deaths reported a week, 5,000 is too many for a disease that can be prevented and treated, reports RTE.
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