GENEVA: Three years to the day after the World Health Organization sounded the highest level of global alert over COVID-19, it said Monday the pandemic remains an international emergency.
The UN health agency’s emergency committee on Covid-19 met last Friday for a 14th time since the start of the crisis.
Following that meeting, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus “concurs with the advice offered by the committee regarding the ongoing COVID-19pandemic and determines that the event continues to constitute a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC),” the organization said in a statement.
Tedros, it said, “acknowledges the committee’s views that the COVID-19 pandemic is probably at a transition point and appreciates the advice of the committee to navigate this transition carefully and mitigate the potential negative consequences.”
Even prior to the meeting, the WHO chief had suggested the emergency phase of the pandemic is not over, pointing to surging numbers of deaths and warning that the global response to the crisis “remains hobbled.”
“As we enter the fourth year of the pandemic, we are certainly in a much better position now than we were a year ago, when the omicron wave was at its peak, and more than 70,000 deaths were being reported to WHO each week,” he told the committee at the start of Friday’s meeting.
Tedros said the weekly death rate had dropped below 10,000 in October but had been rising again since the start of December, while the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in China had led to a spike in deaths.
In mid-January, almost 40,000 COVID-19 weekly deaths were reported — more than half of them in China — while the true toll “is certainly much higher,” he said.
The WHO first declared a so-called PHEIC as what was then called the novel coronavirus began to spread outside China on January 30, 2020.
Though declaring a PHEIC is the internationally agreed mechanism for triggering a global response to such outbreaks, it was only after Tedros described the worsening COVID-19situation as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, that many countries realized the danger.
Globally, more than 752 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 have been reported to the WHO, including more than 6.8 million deaths, though the United Nations’ health agency always stresses that the true numbers are likely much higher.
WHO says COVID-19 still an international emergency
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WHO says COVID-19 still an international emergency
- WHO chief had suggested the emergency phase of the pandemic is not over
US might keep or might sell oil seized near Venezuela, Trump says
- “If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’s ever able to play tough,” he said
PALM BEACH, Florida: US President Donald Trump said on Monday it would be smart for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to leave power, and the United States could keep or sell the oil it had seized off the coast of Venezuela in recent weeks.
Trump’s pressure campaign on Maduro has included a ramped-up military presence in the region and more than two dozen military strikes on vessels allegedly trafficking drugs in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near the South American nation. At least 100 people have been killed in the attacks.
Asked if the goal was to force Maduro from power, Trump told reporters: “Well, I think it probably would... That’s up to him what he wants to do. I think it’d be smart for him to do that. But again, we’re gonna find out.”
“If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’s ever able to play tough,” he said.
“He’s no friend to the United States. He’s very bad. Very bad guy. He’s gotta watch his ass because he makes cocaine and they send it into the US“
In addition to the strikes, Trump has previously announced a “blockade” of all oil tankers under sanctions entering and leaving Venezuela. The US Coast Guard started pursuing an oil tanker in international waters near Venezuela on Sunday, in what would be the second such operation this weekend and the third in less than two weeks if successful.
“Maybe we will sell it, maybe we will keep it,” Trump said when asked what would happen with the seized oil, adding it might also be used to replenish the United States’ strategic reserves.
