“I think we’re coming to that point where we can look at Covid-19 in the same way we look at seasonal influenza,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said.
According to the World Health Organization, the Covid-19 pandemic may reach a point this year where it poses a threat akin to the flu.
The WHO expressed optimism about the pandemic phase of the virus coming to an end and expressed confidence that it will be able to announce an end to the emergency sometime in 2023.
COVID-19 Threat Like Flu This Year, WHO
The International health agency first referred to the situation as a pandemic three years ago this past weekend, however WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus maintains that governments should have sprung into action several weeks earlier.
“I think we’re coming to that point where we can look at Covid-19 in the same way we look at seasonal influenza,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a press conference.
“A threat to health, a virus that will continue to kill. But a virus that is not disrupting our society or disrupting our hospital systems, and I believe that that will come, as Tedros said, this year.”
The head of WHO claimed that compared to earlier in the pandemic, the world is currently in a far better situation.
“I am confident that this year we will be able to say that Covid-19 is over as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC),” he said.
On January 30, 2020, when less than 100 cases and no deaths had been reported outside of China, the WHO issued a PHEIC, the highest degree of alarm it can issue.
But many nations didn’t appear to realize the risk until Tedros referred to the deteriorating situation as a pandemic on March 11 of that year.
“We declared a global health emergency to spur countries to take decisive action, but not all countries did,” he said Friday.
“Three years later, there are almost seven million reported deaths from Covid-19, although we know that the actual number of deaths is much higher.”
He was glad that for the first time since he originally labelled Covid-19 as a pandemic, the weekly number of reported deaths over the past four weeks has been fewer.
Yet, he claimed that 5,000 too many recorded fatalities each week for a condition that may be prevented and cured.
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