WHO experts weigh up whether world ready to end COVID emergency
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[May 04, 2023]
By Jennifer Rigby and Emma Farge
LONDON (Reuters) - A panel of global health experts will meet on
Thursday to decide if COVID-19 is still an emergency under the World
Health Organization's rules, a status that helps maintain international
focus on the pandemic.
The WHO first gave COVID its highest level of alert on January 30 2020,
and the panel has continued to apply the label ever since, at meetings
held every three months.
However, a number of countries have recently begun lifting their
domestic states of emergency, such as the United States. WHO
Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said he hopes to end
the international emergency this year.
There is no consensus yet on which way the panel may rule, advisors to
the WHO and external experts told Reuters.
"It is possible that the emergency may end, but it is critical to
communicate that COVID remains a complex public health challenge," said
Professor Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist who is on the WHO panel.
She declined to speculate further ahead of the discussions, which are
confidential.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/May/04/images/ads/current/graue_sda_042021.png)
One source close to negotiations said lifting the "public health
emergency of international concern", or PHEIC, label could impact global
funding or collaboration efforts. Another said that the unpredictability
of the virus made it hard to call at this stage.
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![](../images/050423PIX/health93.jpg)
The World Health Organisation (WHO) logo
is seen near its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, February 2,
2023. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/May/04/images/ads/current/bennet_lda_010722.png) "We are not out of the pandemic but
we have reached a different stage," said Professor Salim Abdool
Karim, a leading COVID expert who previously advised the South
African government on its response.
Karim, who is not on the WHO panel, said if the emergency status is
lifted, governments should still maintain testing, vaccination and
treatment programmes.
Others said it was time to move to living with COVID as an on-going
health threat, like HIV or tuberculosis.
"All emergencies must come to an end," said Lawrence Gostin, a law
professor at Georgetown University in the United States who follows
the WHO.
"I expect WHO to end the public health emergency of international
concern. If WHO does not end it... [this time], then certainly the
next time the emergency committee meets."
(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby in London and Emma Farge in Geneva;
Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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