Europe 1 with AFP 14:54 p.m., March 17, 2023
Covid-19 will soon be comparable to the threat of seasonal flu, the World Health Organization said Friday. The WHO had declared this "public health emergency of international concern" on January 30, 2020. "Three years later, nearly seven million deaths from Covid-19 have been reported"Covid-19 will soon be comparable to the threat of seasonal flu, the World Health Organization said on Friday, hoping to lower its maximum alert level again this year. "I think we're getting to the point where we can look at Covid-19 the same way we look at seasonal flu, which is a health threat, a virus that will continue to kill, but a virus that doesn't disrupt our society or our hospital systems," the WHO's head of emergency programmes said. Michael Ryan, at a press conference.
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Lower the alert level in 2023?
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was "very pleased to see that, for the first time, the weekly number of deaths reported in the last four weeks has been lower than when we first used the word 'pandemic' three years ago." "We are certainly in a much better position today than at any time during the pandemic," he observed. He was "confident" that the WHO could lower its maximum alert level "this year".
The WHO had declared this "public health emergency of international concern" on January 30, 2020 – when the world had fewer than 100 cases and no deaths outside China – but it was only when Dr Tedros declared the situation a pandemic, in March 2020, that the world had fully grasped the seriousness of the health threat. "We declared a global health emergency to urge countries to take decisive action, but not all of them did," he said Friday.
"Three years later, nearly seven million deaths from Covid-19 have been reported, although we know the number of deaths from Covid-19 is higher," he said.