Emergency committee of WHO discuss whether Covid is still a global health emergency

On Thursday (May 4), the World Health Organization’s (WHO) emergency committee convened to discuss whether Covid-19 still constitutes a global health emergency. According to a report by AFP, the meeting was chaired by French doctor Didier Houssin and may take days before the outcome is released.

The WHO committee has been meeting every three months since it first sounded the highest emergency alarm more than three years ago when the novel coronavirus began spreading outside China. It then reports to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who decides whether the pandemic is still a global emergency.

It is not clear which way the experts will lean, but there have been indications that the WHO may declare an end to the emergency. However, a source close to the negotiations warned that this move could impact global funding or collaboration efforts.

Professor Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on the WHO panel, told Reuters that it is possible that the emergency might end, but emphasized that it is crucial to communicate that Covid-19 remains a complex public health challenge. On the other hand, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, a leading Covid expert who previously advised the South African government, said that the world is not yet out of the pandemic but has reached a different stage.

The WHO emergency committee’s meeting came a day after the United Nations health agency released a new strategy for combatting Covid-19 over the next two years. WHO chief Tedros said that the aim was “to support countries as they transition from an emergency response to longer-term sustained COVID-19 disease prevention, control, and management”. Covid-19 figures have been decreasing, but when the emergency committee met in January, it concluded that the pandemic still constituted a global health emergency.

If the emergency status is lifted, governments must maintain testing, vaccination, and treatment programs, according to Professor Karim. He emphasized the importance of ongoing monitoring and measures to curb the pandemic.