WHO is halfway to ending the Covid-19 pandemic

Covid-19 is now sufficiently under control to raise the maximum level of alertness, the WHO decided on Friday, May 5, after more than three years of the epidemic.at least 20 milliondeaths, crippled the global economy and widened the inequality gap

“It is with great hope that I announce that Covid-19 is no longer a health emergency of international concern.“WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has confirmed that this disease caused”.at least 20 millionthe death toll was almost three times higher than his organization’s previous official toll.

“Long-term management of the epidemic”.

As of May 3, the WHO panel showed just under seven million officially recorded deaths. The experts consulted with the Director General estimated that “it was time to move on to the long-term management of the Covid-19 pandemicdespite the uncertainties surrounding virus evolution. The organization’s highest alert level was declared on January 30, 2020, just a few weeks after the first cases of this new viral respiratory disease, for which there was no specific treatment at the time, were detected in China.

But it wasn’t until the head of the WHO spoke about the epidemic in March 2020 that states and the population became aware of the seriousness of the situation and that sometimes very restrictive health measures are applied, up to months of detention. By then, SARS-CoV-2 had already begun its deadly journey, which would quickly spread throughout the world. The fight against the epidemic has been invented incrementally, often poorly, as demonstrated by the chaotic administration of Donald Trump’s presidency, which is often deaf to scientific recommendations.

“Past” crisis stage

While the number of newly registered deaths caused by Covid has decreased by 95% since January, 16,000 people still died from the disease from the end of March to the end of April, according to WHO statistics. However, in many countries the epidemic has been put on the back burner. Tests and health monitoring have been reduced to a bare minimum. Disarmament considered premature by the WTO.

Crisis stagegone but not covid“, Maria Van Kerkhove, who led the fight against Covid-19 within this organization, warned on Friday, calling onLet the guards down“. Vaccines (coming in record time at the end of 2020), however, remain effective against the most severe forms of the disease, despite countless mutations of the original virus. Undeniable scientific successes, vaccines, particularly the messenger RNA vaccines used for the first time, were first monopolized by countries that could afford to pay the high price, leaving the rest on the floor for many months. As of April 30, more than 13.3 billion doses of vaccine have been injected.

The virus continues to mutate and is still capable of causing new waves of infection.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General

Antivax also mobilized massively and raised doubts about vaccination in general, supported by massive disinformation campaigns on social media. Economic disparities and access to care have been brutally exposed. Long lines of Brazilians with giant oxygen cylinders to save a loved one from suffocation are marked, as are images of countless groves in India to burn bodies. In many countries, the pandemic now seems like background noise, with new variants continuing to appear and threatening to restart the infernal machine.

“The virus continues to mutate and is still capable of causing new waves of infections and deaths“, the head of the WTO emphasized recently. He also drew attention to the ravages of prolonged Covid, which leads to a wide range of more or less disabling symptoms. According to him, one infection in 10 translates into prolonged Covid, which implies that hundreds of millions of people may need long-term care, and whose magnitude and economic and psychological cost are still poorly understood.

Avoid the next disaster

Now the world is looking for the best way to avoid the next health disaster. But the international community has not yet been able to determine exactly how this virus mutated into a form that can be transmitted between people. If a priori the first cases were detected at the end of 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, two theories collide.

This last theory is currently favored by the majority of the scientific community, but the obstruction of the Chinese authorities hinders the progress of the investigation of the origin. At the WHO, member states have also begun discussing a future binding agreement that would better nip the next pandemic in the bud and avoid repeating the same mistakes. The question is not if, but when.