COVID-19 could end this year
The World Health Organization has predicted that COVID-19 could likely disappear as a public health emergency in 2023.
The Organization’s Director General, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, revealed this during a virtual press conference on Friday, March 17.
Recall that COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, when there were less than 100 reported cases of COVID-19 outside China, and no reported deaths outside the country. Communist.
A public health emergency of international concern is the highest level of alarm the WHO can issue under international law.
During the briefing, the WHO chief said there were now nearly seven million reported deaths from COVID-19, although the actual death toll was much higher.
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“We are certainly in a much better position now than we have been at any time during the pandemic. It is very pleasing to see that for the first time the weekly number of deaths reported in the past four weeks has been lower than when we first used the word “pandemic” three years ago.
“I am confident that this year we can say that COVID-19 is over as a public health emergency of international concern.
“We’re not there yet. Last week there were still more than five thousand deaths reported. That’s five thousand too many for a disease that can be prevented and treated. Although we are becoming increasingly optimistic about at the end of the pandemic, the question of how it started remains unanswered,” he said.
Ghebreyesus urged China to be “transparent” in sharing COVID-19 data to determine the origins of the disease.