COVID could become a seasonal flu-like threat this year

The World Health Organization (WHO) indicated this Friday that it hopes to lower its maximum alert level for COVID-19 this year, estimating that the epidemic could soon pose a threat similar to that of seasonal flu.

“We have reached a point where we can look at COVID-19 in the same way we look at the seasonal flu, that is, a health threat, a virus that will continue to kill, but a virus that does not disrupt our society or our hospital systems.”, the head of the WHO emergency programs, Michael Ryan, told the press.

Next to him, the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declared that he was “very pleased to see that, for the first time, the weekly number of deaths registered in the last four weeks was lower than what was registered when we first used the word ‘pandemic’, three years ago”.

“We are certainly in a much better position today than at any time during the pandemic.”, he analyzed.

Tedros showed himselftrusted” that the WHO can lower its maximum alert level this year.

The UN agency decreed on January 30, 2020 the “international public health emergency” due to COVID-19, at a time when there were fewer than 100 positive cases and no deaths outside of China.

Shortly after, in March 2020, Tedros called the situation a pandemic.

“We declared a global health emergency to spur countries to take more decisive action, but not all did”, he recalled on Friday.

“Three years later, there were close to seven million deaths due to COVID-19, although we know that the death toll due to COVID-19 is much higher.”, he indicated.

Source: AFP