There are now no fears of lockdowns; all modes of travel including flights are available; malls, restaurants, and cinemas are all open, and containment and control measures are no more in force!
The global health emergency, declared by the World Health Organization more than three years ago for the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed millions of people around the world and upended daily life in unimaginable ways, has also been lifted.
This follows the recommendation of a key UN advisory panel that the public health emergency be ended. "I have accepted that advice," the WHO Director-General said, adding, "It is therefore with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency."
Although the common man is not under any imminent threat and the so-called surveillance for Covid-19 may stop or reduce greatly, there exists a possibility, however tiny, that the virus may mutate to cause more severe disease.
This fear was conspicuous when WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked people, while announcing the lifting of the emergency, to remain cautious about the novel coronavirus as it still represents a global health threat.
He warned governments not to get complacent as the decision to lift the emergency does not signal an end to the pandemic. According to him, some critical uncertainties about the evolution of the virus persist, which makes it difficult to predict future transmission dynamics or seasonality.
He pointed out that efforts to track how the virus spreads and mutates have “declined significantly around the world, making it more difficult to track known variants and detect new ones.”
Now looking back, the end of the emergency declaration comes after the UN health agency announced it on January 30, 2020. At the time, there were fewer than 10,000 cases of the virus, most of them in China.
In the days that followed, we were flooded with reports of how hospitals across the world struggled to cope with burnout among doctors, nurses, and other workers. We read reports about how hospital emergency rooms jammed up with patients who were waiting long hours or even days to get a bed. So was the chaos outside the hospitals for food and other essentials due to lockdowns, travel bans, closures etc.
According to WHO figures, albeit a vast undercount of the pandemic’s true toll, there have been more than 765 million Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic. Nearly 7 million people have died. Cases peaked in December 2022 following the breakout of Omicron that swept the globe.
Indirect health impacts have also resulted from the disruptions to livelihoods, education and social protection consequent on the pandemic. The International Monetary Fund has estimated cumulative economic loss to 2024 as a consequence of the pandemic at $13.8 trillion.
While vaccines reduced severe disease and death in countries fortunate enough to have them in sufficient quantities in the initial stages, the “shocking” global disparity in access remained one of the biggest risks to ending the pandemic.
Now the governments have strengthened healthcare systems and rolled out vaccination drives. Doctors and researchers have already figured out many measures including methods of transmission; the vulnerable group who are at the highest risk of severe disease and deaths; treatment protocol; medicines that can help in reducing the severity of the disease; and most importantly, the preventive vaccines.
As a result, the population all over the world has now developed a ‘hybrid immunity’ that can offer better protection against future spread. Significantly, our health systems today are not stressed as they were during the last three years. And as such the focus has turned on for a good 2023 and the years ahead!
At the same time, what is required from the part of our society is that we must continue to adapt our collective response to the virus. We must continue to do all we can to protect those most at risk. Only the emergency phase is over, but Covid is not!
The writer is a senior journalist and author with nearly four decades of experience in broadsheet newspapers and magazines in India and the Gulf region
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