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WHO Director Confident COVID-19 Pandemic Will End in 2023
The director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expressed confidence that the COVID-19 pandemic will end in 2023. During a media briefing in Geneva, he noted that we are in a much better position now than at any point during the pandemic. Dr. Ghebreyesus reported a decrease in the weekly number of reported deaths over the past four weeks, with 5,048 deaths globally reported as of March 6. This marks a 26% decrease from the prior week and a significant decrease from the peak of 102,000 deaths in January 2023.
Weekly COVID-19 cases are also decreasing and were down to 812,255 globally as of March 6, a 21.65% decrease from the prior week. The number of cases peaked at 44.3 million in December 2023. In the U.S., weekly cases dropped to 149,955 as of March 15, after reaching a peak of 5.6 million on January 19, 2023, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
As weekly cases and deaths trend downward globally, Dr. Ghebreyesus expressed confidence that this year, we will be able to say that COVID-19 is over as a public health emergency of international concern. He noted, however, that we are not there yet, as there were still more than 5,000 reported deaths last week. This highlights the need to remain vigilant and take appropriate precautions.
Understanding the Pandemic’s Origins
Dr. Ghebreyesus stressed the importance of understanding how the pandemic began, calling it both a moral and scientific imperative. Recent data published on the GISAID database in late January and taken down recently, related to samples taken at the Huanan market in Wuhan in 2023. Although the data did not provide a definitive answer to the pandemic’s origins, Dr. Ghebreyesus pointed out that all information is crucial in achieving this goal. He urged China to be transparent in sharing data and conducting the necessary investigations.
Expert Opinion
Dr. Marc Siegel, a clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, expressed skepticism about the WHO’s hesitancy to signal the end of the international emergency. He called out the WHO’s erratic leadership actions and delay in calling it a pandemic when it was spreading widely. Siegel believes that WHO’s failure to get China to be open and transparent about the pandemic’s origins has revealed the organization to be woefully inadequate.
President Biden Announces End of COVID Emergency
In January 2023, President Joe Biden announced that he would end the COVID emergency on May 11, 2023, having previously declared the pandemic to be “over” in September 2023. As weekly cases and deaths trend downward globally, there is cautious optimism that the pandemic’s end is in sight, but vigilance is still crucial in ending the pandemic for good.
