New Delhi, Mar 18: Covid-19 pandemic, which has so far claimed more than seven million deaths globally, may likely end up being as public health emergency of international concern’ this year and pose a seasonal flu threat, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
“I’m confident that this year we will be able to say that Covid-19 is over as a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a media briefing.
“And I think we’re coming to that point where we can look at Covid-19 in the same way we look at seasonal influenza,” he added.
The WHO chief said that Covid will continue to pose a threat to human health. It will turn into a “virus that will continue to kill, but a virus that is not disrupting our society or disrupting our hospital system”.
He added that the virus may become more transmissible but not cause severe disease.
Covid-19 was marked as pandemic on March 11, 2020.
“We declared a global health emergency to spur countries to take decisive action, but not all countries did,” he said on Friday.