March 18, 2023 – The head of the World Health Organization said on Friday he expects the organization to declare the COVID-19 pandemic over this yr as statistics on the virus proceed to say no.
“I am confident that this year we can say that COVID-19 is over as a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a Briefing in Geneva.
For the primary time, the weekly variety of reported COVID deaths over a four-week period was lower than it was three years ago, when the WHO declared COVID a worldwide pandemic.
“We are certainly in a much better position now than at any other time during the pandemic,” Ghebreyesus said.
In January, Ghebreyesus said the pandemic was likely at a “turning point,” meaning public health measures could possibly be further de-escalated.
In the US, COVID-related statistics have fluctuated up and down over the past three years attributable to the dominance of various virus strains, but now the numbers are showing a downward trend.
A CDC table shows that there are 1,706 Weekly deaths As of March 15 of this yr. This is the bottom variety of weekly deaths since March 25, 2020, when there have been 1,119.
An additional lull occurred when the variety of weekly deaths fell to 1,717 on July 7, 2021. The highest variety of weekly deaths was recorded on January 13, 2021, at over 23,000.
The variety of reported hospital admissions attributable to COVID can also be declining: 2,636 Total admissions for the week ending March 15. In June 2021 and April 2022, hospital admissions were actually barely lower.
Covid cases within the U.S. fell to 21,422 within the week ending March 17 — nearly 20% fewer than the previous week, in keeping with the CDC. Health officials say the number is definitely higher because many individuals discover they’re positive through home testing and don’t notify the local health department. The variety of cases was barely lower in the summertime of 2021, before the omicron surge.
The US government is looking forward to the official end of the pandemic. The Biden administration says that the 2 national emergency declarations related to the COVID-19 pandemic End of May 11This signifies that many services, comparable to free testing and vaccinations, will not be available.
According to the WHO, there are over 760 million COVID cases and over 6.8 million COVID-related deaths worldwide. The United States has essentially the most cases (over 102 million) and deaths (over 1.1 million) of any country.