WHO committee to discuss if Covid is still global emergency

The emergency committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) met on Thursday (May 4) to discuss if Covid is still a global health emergency. According to a report by the news agency AFP, the meeting was supposed to take place during the day and was chaired by French doctor Didier Houssin. But it could be days before the outcome of the meeting is published.

The committee's meeting comes more than three years after it first sounded the WHO's highest emergency alarm as, what was then called the novel coronavirus, began spreading outside China. The committee has been meeting every three months to discuss the pandemic and reports to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who then decides whether Covid remains a global emergency.

It is not yet clear which way experts will lean, but there have been indications that the WHO is open to declaring an end to the emergency.

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Speaking to the news agency Reuters, Professor Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on the WHO panel, said it is possible that the emergency might end, "but it is critical to communicate that Covid remains a complex public health challenge." Professor Koopmans did not provide any other details.

On the other hand, a source close to the negotiations told the news agency that lifting the public health emergency of international concern or PHEIC label could impact global funding or collaboration efforts.

Thursday's meeting of WHO's emergency committee comes a day after the United Nations health agency put out a new strategy for combating Covid over the next two years in which Tedros said the aim was "to support countries as they transition from an emergency response to longer-term sustained COVID-19 disease prevention, control and management".

Covid figures have been falling for a while, but when the emergency committee met in January, it concluded the PHEIC tag was still merited.

Earlier on Thursday, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, a leading Covid expert who previously advised the South African government on its response, said the world is not out of the pandemic but has reached a different stage.

Professor Karim, who is not a part of the WHO panel, said if the emergency status is lifted, governments should still maintain testing, vaccination and treatment programmes.

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