Covid-19: the virus on the verge of becoming a threat similar to the seasonal flu, judges the WHO
The Covid, a virus soon no more dangerous than the flu? The WHO said on Friday it hoped to lower its maximum alert level this year on Covid-19believing that the epidemic was on the verge of no longer representing a threat similar to the seasonal flu.
“I think we are getting to the point where we can look at Covid-19 the same way we look at seasonal flu, which is a health threat, a virus that will continue to kill, but a virus that does not disrupt our society or our hospital systems,” WHO emergency program chief Michael Ryan told a news conference.
“Still too early” to lower the alert level
“We are certainly in a better position than we have ever been since the start of the pandemic” but “it is still too early” to lower the alert level, in particular due to a still very high number of deaths , said the Director General of the WHO. The next meeting of the emergency committee is theoretically scheduled for the end of April.
At the end of January, this WHO emergency committee had proposed “alternative mechanisms for maintaining global and national attention on Covid-19 after the end of this “public health emergency of international concern”, decreed more than three years ago. The risk would be to give the impression that we no longer need to worry about the Covid, he warned.
“My message is clear: do not underestimate this virus, it has surprised us and will continue to surprise us and it will continue to kill, unless we do more to provide health means to people who need it and to fight against disinformation on a global scale”, had insisted the director general last January.
The WHO had declared this “public health emergency of international concern” on January 30, 2020 – when the world had fewer than 100 cases and no deaths outside of China – but it was not until Dr Tedros called the pandemic situation, in March 2020, that the world had taken full measure of the seriousness of the health threat.
