The World Health Organization (WHO) hopes that Covid-19 and monkeypox will no longer be public health emergencies worldwide in 2023, when the two diseases have completed their most dangerous phase.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a key lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic was that countries need to respond quickly to surprise outbreaks.
On Covid-19, he said the number of weekly deaths is now around a fifth of what it was a year ago.
“Last week, less than 10,000 people lost their lives. It’s still 10,000 too many and all countries can still do a lot to save lives,” he told a press conference.
“But we have come a long way. We hope that at some point next year we can say that Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency,” he added.
WHO’s Emergency Committee on Covid-19, which advises the director-general on whether the virus constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, will discuss criteria for whether or not to establish an end of this health emergency at a meeting in January.
Maria Van Kerkhove, who leads the WHO technical team on Covid, said this committee would examine the epidemology, variants like Omicron and the impact of the virus.
The epidemic “is not what it was at the beginning”, with cases today giving rise to fewer hospitalizations and deaths, she explained. “These deaths occur largely in the case of unvaccinated people”, or who have not received all the vaccines, she said once more.
– “Here to stay” –
The WHO estimates that 30 billion doses of vaccines have been administered worldwide, with however 30% of the world’s population having received only one dose.
“This virus is not going away. It is here to stay and all countries will need to learn how to manage it along with other respiratory diseases,” he said.
Nearly 650 million cases of Covid infection and more than 6.6 million deaths have been recorded, according to the WHO, which however considers these figures to be far below reality.
“We will still face many uncertainties and challenges in 2023. In low-income countries, only one in five people have been vaccinated,” said the head of the UN organization.
He also stressed the need to better understand the genesis of the virus, first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. “We continue to ask China to share its data and conduct the studies that have been required to better understand the origins of this virus,” he said.
“All the hypotheses remain on the table”, including that of a virus which would have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, he affirmed.
Regarding monkeypox, Mr. Tedros pointed out that the global epidemic had taken the world by surprise.
More than 82,000 cases have been reported in 110 countries, but the death rate has remained low, with 65 dead.
“If the current trend continues, we hope that next year we can also declare the end of this health emergency,” he concluded.
