Covid-19 could turn to flu-like threat: WHO

Friday, the World Health Organization reported that the Covid-19 pandemic could reach a point this year where it poses a risk comparable to influenza.The WHO is optimistic that it will be able to declare an end to the emergency in 2023, as it is increasingly optimistic about the end of the pandemic phase of the virus.

Last weekend marked three years since the UN health agency first referred to the situation as a pandemic; however, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insists countries should have acted several weeks earlier.Michael Ryan, WHO’s director of emergencies, told a press conference, “I think we’re approaching the point where we can look at Covid-19 in the same way as seasonal influenza.”

“A health hazard, a contagion that will continue to cause death. But a virus that does not disrupt our society or hospital systems, and I believe that will arrive this year, as Tedros predicted.”The WHO director-general stated that the world is in a significantly stronger position than at any point during the pandemic.”I am confident that we will be able to declare the end of Covid-19 as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) this year,” he said.

On January 30, 2020, the WHO declared a PHEIC, its highest level of alert, when, outside of China, fewer than 100 cases and no fatalities had been reported.But it wasn’t until March 11 of that year, when Tedros described the deteriorating situation as a pandemic, that many countries appeared to recognise the peril.

“We declared a global health emergency to motivate countries to take decisive action, but not all did,” he said on Friday.”Three years later, nearly seven million deaths have been attributed to Covid-19, although we know the actual number is much higher.”

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He was delighted that for the first time in the past four weeks, the weekly number of reported deaths has been less than when he first described Covid-19 as a pandemic.However, he stated that more than 5,000 fatalities per week was excessive for a disease that can be prevented and treated.