The WHO (World Health Organization) indicated this Wednesday (14) that it expects Covid-19 and Mpox to cease to be public health emergencies in 2023, as both diseases have left behind their most dangerous phases.
WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the weekly death toll from Covid-19 was about a fifth of the figure a year earlier.
“Last week, less than 10,000 people died (by Covid). That’s still 10,000 more deaths and countries can still do a lot to save lives”, Tedros declared at a press conference.
“But we have come a long way. We are hopeful that sometime in the next year we will be able to say that Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency,” he said.
Tedros also said that the WHO emergency committee, which advises him on its declarations of public health emergencies of international concern (PHEIC, its acronym in English), will begin discussing in January how the end of the emergency phase will be.
The WHO body meets every few months to decide whether the new coronavirus, which emerged three years ago in Wuhan, China, and killed more than 6.6 million people, still represents a “public health emergency of international concern”. “.
The designation aims to trigger a coordinated international response and could unlock funding to collaborate on sharing vaccines and treatments.
“This virus is not going to disappear. It is here to stay and all countries will have to learn to deal with it, as with other respiratory diseases”, he recalled, insisting that there is still a lot of uncertainty and that in low-income countries only 1 in each 5 people were vaccinated.
Asked about the conditions necessary for the designation to end, WHO senior epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said “there is more work to be done”.
“If there are large segments of the population that have not been vaccinated, the world still has a lot of work to do,” said WHO director of emergencies Mike Ryan on the same subject.
As for Mpox (the new name for monkeypox), more than 82,000 cases have been reported in 110 countries since the emergency was declared in July, although mortality remains very low, with only 65 deaths.
“Fortunately, the number of cases has dropped by more than 90%,” said the WHO director. “If this trend continues, we hope that next year we will also be able to declare the end of this emergency,” he added.
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