Covid: The World Health Organization hopes to declare an end to the state of emergency in 2023 | Science and health

in a hopeful tone, Tedros AdhanomDirector general World Health Organization On Wednesday, the 21-year-old (WHO) said he hoped to issue a decree to end the COVID-19 emergency next year. However, he pointed out a series of loopholes that do not allow to say that the epidemic is over, even with a more encouraging scenario with cases and deaths on a downward trend.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has abated significantly this year, the global outbreak of monkeypox is subsiding and there have been no cases of Ebola in Uganda for more than three weeks,” he said. “We expect each of these emergencies to be declared at different times over the next year.”

Adhanom stressed that we are “in a much better position with the pandemic than we were a year ago,” when we were experiencing the early stages of the Omicron supplement wave, and that the number of deaths from the disease reported weekly “has fallen by 90%.” The organization’s dashboard shows that in the past 24 hours, 354,000 new infections and 895 deaths were reported worldwide.

However, he stressed that “there are still many uncertainties and gaps that make us say that the epidemic is over.” Among them, he mentioned, are the lack of monitoring, testing, and sequencing; millions of unvaccinated people; gaps in treatment and health systems; Gaps in understanding the post-Covid situation, as well as how this pandemic began. For him, all of this undermines our knowledge of how the virus is changing, endangering lives and also impairing our ability to predict and deal with future pandemics.

Tedros stressed that he was “very concerned” about the development of the disease in China, “with the increasing reports of serious illnesses.” “The World Health Organization supports China to focus its efforts on vaccinating the most vulnerable people across the country, and we continue to extend our support for clinical care and the protection of its health system.”

Covid was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) in January 2020. According to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations, a legal agreement involving 196 countries, a public health emergency is defined as “an exceptional event that has been identified as posing a risk to public health in other countries through the international spread of the disease and may require a coordinated international response.”