COVID-19 still a global public health emergency, says WHO
OTTAWA The World Health Organization decided Monday not to end to the COVID-19 global public health emergency it declared three years ago, even though the pandemic has reached what the international body calls an “inflection point.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, said Monday “there is no doubt that we’re in a far better situation now” than a year ago, but he warned that in the last eight weeks, at least 170,000 people have died around the world in connection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. He called for atrisk groups to be fully vaccinated, an increase in testing and early use of antivirals, an expansion of lab networks, and a fight against “misinformation” about the pandemic.
Why is COVID-19 still considered an emergency when life is starting to get back to normal?
In the three years since COVID-19 was designated an emergency, workers have begun to go back to the office, public health restrictions have lifted and masks are no longer mandatory in most places.
In Canada, public health officials credit this slow return to normalcy to the high rate of vaccination among Canadians, and the availability of therapeutic drugs to prevent and treat serious cases of infection.
Those life-saving therapies are not available everywhere in the world, Tedros reminded the WHO’s COVID-19 emergency committee before they began their meeting Friday.
The committee of global experts said in a statement Monday that they’re still worried about “insufficient” vaccine uptake in low- and middle-income countries.
What will it take to end the emergency?
The committee recommended the WHO come up with some other way to make sure countries stay focused on COVID-19 after the formal emergency designation is called off.
Moving past the emergency will require commitment from the WHO, member counties and international institutions to “developing and implementing sustainable, systematic, long-term prevention, surveillance, and control action plans,” the committee said in a statement Monday.
The committee will meet again in three months to reconsider ending the emergency designation.
What will Canada do differently once the WHO declares the emergency over?
Nothing much. At a press conference on Jan. 20, Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said no matter what the WHO decided, Canada would continue to track cases, serious illnesses and deaths, as well as roll out vaccination campaigns. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths spiked noticeably over Christmas and in early January, Tam said, but all now appear to be trending down.
“We mustn’t, I think, let go of the gains that we’ve had in the last several years,” she said. “I think whatever the decision is made by the director-general of WHO, I think we just need to keep going with what we’re doing now.”