‘GREAT HOPE’

COVID Is No Longer a Global Health Emergency, WHO Declares

The end comes over three years after the emergency stopped the world in its tracks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared an end to the COVID global public health emergency on Friday. “For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend with population immunity increasing from vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing, and the pressure on health systems easing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference in Switzerland. “This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before COVID-19,” Tedros added. “It’s therefore with great hope that I declared COVID-19 over as a global health emergency.” Since the emergency was first declared on Jan. 30, 2020, almost 7 million people have died from COVID around the world, according to the U.N. Tedros estimated that the true toll is over 20 million.