WHO states that Covid is still a global emergency.

The World Health Organization has declared the COVID-19 pandemic to be a global health emergency. But that may not be the case for much longer.

The WHO decision comes exactly three years after COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) for the first time. It follows a meeting of the COVID-19 emergency committee on January 27. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus agreed with the committee's assessment that COVID-19 remains a risk.

However, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed optimism that the world would be able to exit the pandemic's emergency phase this year.

“We remain hopeful that in the coming year, the world will transition to a new phase in which we reduce hospitalizations and deaths to the lowest possible level, and health systems are able to manage Covid-19 in an integrated and sustainable way,” Tedros said in a statement.

However, the pandemic no longer poses the same threat it did when it spread like wildfire across the globe in 2020. According to the committee, the crisis "may be approaching an inflection point."

The committee acknowledges that it is unlikely that the virus can be eliminated from human and animal reservoirs, but it is unclear how the world will transition from a PHEIC to endemicity. The committee recommended that a proposal for an alternative mechanism be developed to keep international attention on COVID-19 even after the crisis is no longer classified as a PHEIC.

For the time being, Tedros has asked countries to maintain their focus on vaccination of high-priority groups, improve reporting of COVID-19 surveillance data, and increase uptake of COVID treatments and tests.