The World Health Organisation has declared that the deadly Coronavirus is no longer a global heath emergency.
"It's with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The development followed the 15th meeting of WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on Covid which came to a conclusion that Covid s no longer a public health emergency globally.
WHO however noted that the declaration of an end to the global health emergency did not mean COVID was over globally.
“There’s still a public health threat out there, and we all see that every day in terms of the evolution of this virus, in terms of its global presence, its continued evolution and continued vulnerabilities in our communities, both societal vulnerabilities, age vulnerabilities, protection vulnerabilities, and many other things,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme.
“So, we fully expect that this virus will continue to transmit, but this is the history of pandemics.In most cases, pandemics truly end when the next pandemic begins. I know that’s a terrible thought but that is the history of pandemics.”
According to WHO data, world over, there have been more than 765 million confirmed Covid-19 cases whereas the disease accounts for 6.87 million deaths globally since its outbreak.
Uganda has since the outbreak of the pandemic registered 170602 Coronavirus cases and 3626 deaths.
In January 2020, WHO declared the Coronavirus outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern and six weeks later, it was declared a pandemic.