The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared an end to the COVID global public health emergency on Friday. “For more than a year, the pandemic has been on a downward trend with population immunity increasing from vaccination and infection, mortality decreasing, and the pressure on health systems easing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference in Switzerland. “This trend has allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before COVID-19,” Tedros added. “It’s therefore with great hope that I declared COVID-19 over as a global health emergency.” Since the emergency was first declared on Jan. 30, 2020, almost 7 million people have died from COVID around the world, according to the U.N. Tedros estimated that the true toll is over 20 million.
