Pandemic
Corona: Experts advise on the end of the health emergency
People wait wearing masks before boarding a bus in Madrid in April 2022. photo
© Paul White/AP/dpa
In January 2020, the WHO declared an international health emergency because of the corona pandemic to shake up governments. Should the state of emergency end? Experts are now advising on this.
Independent experts began consultations on Thursday in Geneva on the global health emergency imposed in January 2020 due to the corona pandemic. The council reviews every three months whether to end the state of emergency. The World Health Organization (WHO) usually follows his recommendation. The result is often not announced until days later.
The declaration of a state of emergency is the highest level of alert that WHO can impose. The primary motive for the declaration is to rouse governments and the public to address a threat and take action. If the state of emergency – officially a “health emergency of international concern” – ends, it will have no concrete effects.
Of course, the world is different today than it was in early 2020, when the pandemic began, said WHO corona expert Maria van Kerkhove before the consultations began. There are now tools such as vaccines, medicines and proven measures such as wearing a mask or keeping your distance. But they are not used enough in many places.
“The Sars-CoV-2 virus circulates at an incredibly intense level,” said van Kerkhove. But since the end of many corona protection measures, too little has been tested and too few virus sequences have been determined to have an accurate picture. This makes it difficult to see the spread of new variants quickly. One has to assume that new variants are even easier to transfer than previously known ones. Countries should not relax their efforts to contain the spread, she said. “There is still a lot to do. As WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus always says: This pandemic is not over yet.”
Experts are concerned that an end to the public health emergency could send the wrong signal and all protective measures will be abandoned. When the WHO declared the emergency on January 30, 2020, around 100 infections were known in 21 countries outside of China. To date, almost 620 million infections and a good 6.5 million deaths have been reported worldwide. The number of unreported cases is likely to be higher.
WHO on the health emergency due to Covid-19