WHO ends COVID-19 PHEIC

WHO first declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on Jan. 30, 2020. The designation signaled that the coronavirus was a threat to the world, rather than just China where it first emerged, and gave countries more leeway to enact public health measures to reduce the risk of viral transmission.

Since the start of the pandemic, data shows that there have been over 750 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide and almost 7 million deaths. However, these numbers are likely an undercount, with WHO estimating the true death toll to be at least 20 million.

On Friday, WHO officially ended the COVID-19 PHEIC, citing an ongoing decline in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths worldwide. The decision was made following a meeting with a panel of independent experts on Thursday.

"For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend with population immunity increasing from vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing, and the pressure on health systems easing," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. "This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before Covid-19."

"It's therefore with great hope that I declared Covid-19 over as a global health emergency," he said.

According to K. Srinath Reddy, who led India's  Public Health Foundation  during the pandemic, WHO's decision to lift the PHEIC was appropriate. "It no longer possesses the same level of danger," he said, adding that COVID-19 "has achieved a level of equilibrium, a certain type of coexistence with the human host."

Githinji Gitahi, executive director of  Amref Health Africa, agreed with Reddy's assessment that it was time for the global emergency to end. "The danger of keeping it forever is diluting the tool — you need it to retain its force," he said.

On May 3, WHO released an updated COVID-19 management plan to help countries transition from emergency response to long-term prevention and control of the coronavirus over the next two years.

How WHO is thinking about COVID-19 moving forward

Even with the end of the PHEIC, WHO noted that COVID-19 continues to be a risk, as new variants could emerge and cause another surge in cases. Many countries have also reduced their surveillance and genetic sequencing efforts, which have made it more difficult to track known variants and detect new ones efficiently.

"The emergency phase … is over, but Covid is here to stay," said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's COVID-19 technical lead.

"Covid has changed our world and it has changed us," Tedros said. "If we all go back to the way we were before Covid-19, we will have failed to learn its lessons and we will have failed future generations."

According to Margareth Dalcolmo, a respiratory physician and a member of Brazil's National Academy of Medicine, the end of the global health emergency should be considered a warning for future pandemic, rather than a successful milestone.

"Take this as an alert, a time to start being prepared for the next pandemic," she said, "because we know respiratory viruses are going to increase."

Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said public health leaders should improve their contact tracing and other outbreak response activities ahead of the next viral threat.

Wafaa El-Sadr, director of the global health initiative at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, added that leaders should continue ongoing disease surveillance efforts and strengthen health systems in poorer countries.

"It should be the beginning of preparedness," El-Sadr said. "We have a lot of work to do to be able to face the next health crisis." (Nolen, Wall Street Journal, 5/5; Kimball, CNBC, 5/5; Branswell, STAT, 5/5; McKay/Abbott, Wall Street Journal, 5/5)

With the U.S. COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) slated to end this month, several pandemic-era healthcare provisions  will also end — leaving patients with higher costs and more difficulty accessing care.