New York: In what can be seen as a ‘symbolic’ end to the devastating coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency.
“It’s with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“That does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat,” he hastened to add.
Tedros further said he won’t hesitate to reconvene experts to reassess the situation if COVID-19 “put our world in peril,” reported AFP.
Tedros stated that the pandemic had been on a downward trend for more than a year, and most countries have returned to pre-COVID life.
“COVID has changed our world and it has changed us,” the WHO chief said, warning that the risk of new variants still remained.
The UN health agency declared coronavirus threat as an international crisis on January 30, 2020, before announcing COVID-19 as a global pandemic six weeks later, on March 11.
The pandemic led to lockdowns, devastated economies worldwide and killed over 7 million people worldwide.
