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The World Health Organization announced Friday that Covid-19 is under sufficient control to raise the state of high alert associated with it, more than three years after the spread of this epidemic that caused millions of deaths, but it warned that it must not be complacent.

“It is with much hope that I declare that Covid-19 no longer constitutes a global health emergency,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, estimating that the pandemic had killed “at least 20 million people,” a toll three times higher than official estimates.

On May 3, the World Health Organization officially counted about seven million deaths due to the epidemic.

The experts consulted by the Director-General considered that “the time has come to move to a long-term management of the COVID-19 pandemic,” despite the uncertainty that remains associated with the evolution of this virus.

But “the worst thing any country can do right now is use this announcement as a reason to let their guard down, dismantle the systems they created, or send a message to their people that COVID-19 is nothing to worry about,” Tedros added.

And the World Health Organization announced the highest alert level on January 30, 2020, just weeks after the first cases of this new respiratory disease were monitored in China, while there was not yet any specific treatment for it.

However, with the director of the World Health Organization talking about an epidemic in March 2020, countries and populations realized the seriousness of the situation, and very restrictive health measures were taken, sometimes leading to long months of closure.

It was then that SARS-CoV-2 began its deadly spread, which led to its rapid emergence in the entire world.

Anti-pandemic measures were devised over time, and most of the time in chaos, as demonstrated by the chaotic management of the pandemic crisis by the administration of former US President Donald Trump, who disdained scientific recommendations.

Tedros added that “one of the biggest tragedies” about Covid “is that this matter could have passed in a different way,” expressing his regret for “lack of coordination, fairness and solidarity” and for “the loss of lives that should not have been lost.”

“We have to promise ourselves, our children and our grandchildren that we will not make these mistakes again,” he added.

– Epidemic today –
Although the death toll from Covid has fallen significantly from 95% since January – the virus still killed a person every three minutes last week.

In turn, Maria Van Kerkhove, who has been responsible for combating the pandemic at the World Health Organization since its inception, told reporters, “We cannot let our guard down,” explaining, “The crisis phase, the emergency phase, has ended, but Covid has not ended.”

But in many countries, the epidemic has abated and health checks and monitoring have been reduced to a minimum, which the WHO considers premature.

The vaccines that appeared in record time at the end of 2020 remain effective against the most severe forms of the disease, despite the many mutations of the original virus.

And the vaccines, which of course were a great scientific success, especially those that work with the messenger RNA technology that was used for the first time, were initially monopolized by countries that were able to pay their high price, leaving other countries for many months without the possibility of obtaining them.

As of April 30, more than 13.3 billion doses of the vaccine have been injected.

There was also a major mobilization by opponents of the vaccine, which cast doubts about vaccinations in general, and supported them with massive media misinformation campaigns on social media.

The pandemic has exposed great economic disparities and disparities in access to care. Pictures of long waiting lines for Brazilians carrying huge oxygen canisters to rescue people close to suffocation, as well as pictures of the many incinerators in India to get rid of corpses, were imprinted in the minds.

In many countries, the epidemic has become of secondary importance, while new variants continue to emerge, threatening to renew its spread.

“The virus continues to mutate and is still capable of causing new waves of infections and deaths,” the WHO director confirmed recently.

He also pointed to the repercussions of the long Covid, which leads to a wide range of symptoms that impede in one way or another the lives of the infected.

He added that one infection out of every ten is considered to be from long Covid, which means that hundreds of millions of people may be in need of long-term care, the size or economic and psychological costs of which have not been well taken into account.

– Origin of the virus –
The world is now looking for the best way to avoid the next health disaster.

But the international community has not yet been able to determine how this virus mutated into a form that could be transmitted between humans.

And if the first cases were detected at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, there are two conflicting theories: a leakage occurred from a laboratory in the city where this virus was being studied, or it was transmitted through an intermediary animal that infected people who were attending a local market.

This last theory currently seems more likely by the majority of the scientific community, but obstruction by the Chinese authorities is preventing progress in the investigation into the origin of the virus.

At the World Health Organization, member states also began discussing a future binding agreement that would allow epidemics to be eradicated as they appeared and avoid repeating the same mistakes.

The question is not if that will happen, but when.