Sharjah 24 – AFP: The Covid-19 pandemic, which killed millions of people and wreaked economic and social havoc, no longer constitutes a global health emergency, the WHO said Friday, warning that the threat remained.
It is "with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency", World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
The move came after the WHO's independent emergency committee on the Covid crisis agreed it no longer merited the organisation's highest alert level and "advised that it is time to transition to long-term management of the COVID-19 pandemic".
But the danger was not over, according to Tedros, who estimated Covid had killed "at least 20 million" people -- about three times the nearly seven million deaths officially recorded.
"This virus is here to stay. It is still killing, and it's still changing," he said.
"The worst thing any country could do now is to use this news as a reason to let down its guard, to dismantle the systems it has built, or to send the message to its people that Covid-19 is nothing to worry about."
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