More than three years after the World Health Organization (WHO) first declared COVID-19 a global health emergency, the agency has now decided to end the status only a few days before the May 11 deadline set up by the U.S. government to dissolve the U.S. public health emergency.
The decision was made by a panel of independent experts, and although some members of the panel were a little reluctant, it was eventually decided that the virus no longer met the criteria of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The virus was first granted status towards the end of January 2020.
The chair of the emergency committee, Didier Houssin, explained that the decision to end the PHEIC was influenced by the fact that the system lacked the capability to handle sub-acute or chronic diseases.
Although the official death toll from COVID-19 is around 6.9 million, the WHO estimates that the disease actually took the lives of more than twice the number of people.
The Importance of PHEIC and Potential Consequences of Ending a Global Health Emergency
- PHEIC is a tool created by the International Health Regulations to help the WHO handle globally spread diseases
- It allows the WHO director-general to make recommendations to discourage countries from taking actions that deter them from alerting the WHO of dangerous disease outbreaks
- Ending a global health emergency may result in a loss of international collaboration and funding efforts for the cause
In order to help the WHO adequately handle diseases that had the potential to become globally spread, the International Health Regulations created a tool within itself called PHEIC, which allows the WHO director-general to make recommendations aimed at discouraging countries from taking actions that deter them from alerting the WHO if they are dealing with an outbreak of dangerous diseases. These include actions such as closing borders or restricting trade.
One effect that ending the emergency may have is that it is possible that any international collaboration or funding efforts for the cause may lose focus or completely end. In many places around the world, COVID-19 restrictions have been slack for a while now.
For example, in April last year, the European Union also declared that the emergency phase of the pandemic is over, and in China, less than six months ago, all prolonged severe COVID-19 restrictions were lifted.
Despite the fact that data from the WHO shows that the COVID-19 death rate has fallen from a peak of over 100,000 people per week in January 2021 to as low as 3,500 in the week of April 24, 2023, Houssin has highlighted that the risk of a more pathogenic variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus still remains, which in turn may trigger a new PHEIC.
However, to combat this, the emergency committee has recommended that the WHO use a tool of the IHR, which would mean setting up a review committee to advise the WHO on creating long-term recommendations in order to manage the disease. Ghebreyesus has decided to accept this recommendation.
This may be because, in the words of Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s health emergencies program, the battle is still not over, and there are still weaknesses in the system that need to be addressed.
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