World Health Organization: COVID still a global health emergency

World Health Organization: COVID still a global health emergency

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The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that COVID-19 remains a global emergency, nearly 2-1/2 years after it was first declared.

The Emergency Committee, made up of independent experts, said in a statement that rising cases, ongoing viral evolution and pressure on health services in a number of countries meant that the situation was still an emergency.

Cases reported to WHO had risen by 30% in the last fortnight, although increased population immunity, largely from vaccines, had seen a “decoupling” of cases from hospitalizations and deaths, the committee’s statement said.

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Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, seen here at the 75th World Health Assembly at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 22, 2022, said “COVID-19 is nowhere near over.”
(Reuters/Denis Balibouse/File Photo)

“COVID-19 is nowhere near over,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference from Geneva after the announcement. “As the virus pushes at us, we must push back.”

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The U.N. health agency first declared the highest level of alert, known as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, for COVID-19 on Jan. 30, 2020. Such a determination can help accelerate research, funding and international public health measures to contain a disease.