WHO Ends Global Emergency Status for COVID-19 3 Years After Declaration, CDC Director Resigns

The World Health Organization ended the global emergency status for COVID-19 more than three years after its original declaration.

The global health agency's Emergency Committee held its first meeting on 22 and 23 January 2020. 

Following its second meeting on January 30, 2020, the Director-General declared that the outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

The Committee was informed that, globally, 13.3 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered.

According to WHO data, the COVID death rate has slowed from a peak of more than 100,000 people per week in January 2021 to over 3,500 in the week of April 24, 2023.

In January, The Biden administration allowed the ongoing Covid-19 emergency declarations to end on May 11 and instead manage the virus more like a seasonal respiratory disease.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it would stop reporting or monitoring COVID-19 case data and transmission rates after the government ends the pandemic's public health emergency designation next week.

The agency will stop using its COVID-19 Community Levels (CCL) system, which relies on those metrics to track the spread of the virus, and will instead primarily rely on hospital admission data.

The CDC will continue to provide COVID death rates but will no longer rely on aggregate case data reported by local jurisdictions and will use national death certificate data.

CDC's Director Rochelle Walensky will leave the institution at the end of June, the CDC said on Friday.

Walensky has transitioned CDC after two years of COVID-19-related closures and waves of virus variants.

"The end of the COVID-19 public health emergency marks a tremendous transition for our country, for public health, and in my tenure as CDC Director," Walensky wrote.

Photo by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay