On Friday, experts began consultations on a possible lifting of the international corona health emergency. The decision will likely be announced by the World Health Organization in Geneva on Monday at the earliest, according to WHO circles. According to a spokeswoman for the WHO, the virtual meeting of the Corona Emergency Committee first featured the presentation of current pandemic data and then the debate.
The session wasn’t supposed to end until Friday night at the earliest. The committee then makes a recommendation to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who then makes an independent decision for or against the repeal.
At the start of the meeting, Tedros highlighted that corona deaths are on the rise, mainly because of the lifting of pandemic restrictions in China. Last week, nearly 40,000 deaths worldwide were reported to the WHO, more than half of them in China. Since the beginning of December, more than 170,000 people around the world have died after being infected with Covid-19. But Tedros also emphasized that vaccines, medicine and corona tests save many lives.
The declaration of a state of emergency is the highest level of alert that WHO can impose. It does this when there are threats, so that governments and the public are awakened and prepared. Neither the declaration nor the lifting of the state of emergency – officially a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” (PHEIC) – has immediate consequences. Each country decides for itself how to manage its crisis.
(SERVICE – www.who.int/groups/covid-19-your-emergency-committee)