COVID-19 remains a global health emergency, WHO says

Despite a decline in cases and deaths from COVID-19 worldwide, the World Health Organization says the virus remains a public health emergency of international concern.

Despite a decline in cases and deaths from COVID-19 worldwide, the World Health Organization says the virus remains a public health emergency of international concern.

For the first time since this declaration was made in January 2020, the WHO’s emergency committee has discussed whether the designation should be terminated.

It determined too many people are still dying, the virus is still spreading and there remain too many unknowns about how the 300 subvariants of the Omicron strain circulating around the world could change the current picture, the WHO said Wednesday.

“While the global situation has obviously improved since the pandemic began, the virus continues to change, and there remain many risks and uncertainties,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters during a briefing in Geneva.

“This pandemic has surprised us before and very well could again.”

Dr. Didier Houssin, chair of the WHO emergency committee, said the decision not to terminate the designation of COVID-19 as a global health emergency by the committee was unanimous.

He also said the number of deaths every week remains too high, and uncertainty and risk remains about the pathogenic effects and immune evasion of new variants of concern.

A total of 9,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported globally in the first week of October, which was a 10 per cent drop from the week before, according to WHO data.