The World Health Organization (WHO) decided to maintain the maximum alert level for the Covid-19 pandemic, exactly three years after declaring the disease an international public health emergency.
According to a WHO statement cited by the AFP agency, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus followed the recommendations of the emergency committee on Covid-19, made up of experts, who met on Friday, January 27.
The committee had declared the outbreak of Covid-19 a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, at a time when no deaths had yet been recorded out of just 100 cases outside China.
Three years later, Dr. Tedros indicated that he considered lifting the highest alert level premature. "Although I do not want to preempt the opinion of the emergency committee, I remain very concerned about the situation in many countries and the increasing number of deaths," he told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
The disease caused 170,000 deaths in the last two months.
According to WHO figures, and since its emergence at the end of 2019, 6,804,491 deaths from Covid-19 have been reported as of January 27, although the organization and experts agree that the number of deaths is much higher. due to under-registration.
