What happened: On Friday, May 5, 2023, the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 is officially no longer a global health emergency. This decision was made at WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee. This announcement comes over three years after the WHO first declared COVID-19 to be a public health emergency in January of 2020. In that time, about 765 million people have gotten sick from COVID-19, and about 7 million people have died from COVID-19.

Why did this happen: Due to mass vaccination and infection, COVID-19 infections and deaths have been trending downward for over a year. In addition, there is no COVID-19 variant that falls under the WHO’s category “variant of concern” (VOC), which is the highest risk category for a COVID-19 variant being monitored. 

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus shared that the WHO and its experts have been monitoring COVID-19 trends to determine when to end the emergency and raise the alarm, and that the current lower rate of infections, lower death rate, and a lack of VOC all indicated that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency and can be monitored and addressed along with other ongoing health threats such as the flu.

What does this declaration mean in practice: This change on its own doesn’t mean much for individuals in their daily lives, but it does have a ripple effect that will likely affect individuals around the world. The declaration of a public health emergency by the WHO is used as a warning signal for countries around the world about an extreme health threat. That warning signal is used for the following:

1. To encourage countries to declare an emergency that will put certain emergency measures in place,
2. To set off coordinated global collaboration to address the emergency, and
3. To signal the need for aid and resources for specific countries in most need

It’s easiest to think about the declaration as a warning system because it essentially sets the norm for how we think about a health threat all over the world. 

That change in the warning itself is not a practical change, but it does, in turn, lead to practical changes. The goal of the WHO’s declaration is to change efforts from emergency response to long-term management as millions of people continue to be infected or reinfected with the virus. 

As a result, what we will likely see in response to this WHO declaration is more countries ending their public health emergencies and putting policies and measures in place for long-term management of the virus. In addition, we will likely see a social shift around how we talk about COVID-19, think about COVID-19, and act in response to COVID-19. These shifts already started before the WHO’s announcement. 

The end of public health emergencies by individual countries will then lead to more practical changes that likely will have big impacts on some individuals. For instance, the U.S. is ending its public health emergency on May 11. This end to the COVID-19 U.S. emergency will mean there will be far fewer government resources dedicated to urgently combating the spread of COVID-19, such as free testing, free vaccines, and a requirement of health insurance plans to cover some costs related to COVID-19. The virus will begin to be monitored and addressed more similarly to other ongoing diseases like the flu and RSV. 

This is the ripple effect. While the WHO announcing that the COVID-19 emergency is over doesn’t change much on its own, the effects will trickle down to the individual level. 

Is Covid-19 no longer a threat? COVID-19 is still very much a threat. COVID-19 is still causing illness, hospitalization, and death around the world. About 3,500 people still die every week around the world from the virus. 

For reference, it’s estimated that about 7,000 to 8,000 people die per week on average from the flu every year. Though it’s important to note that if you get Covid-19, you are more likely to die from it than die from the flu. 

In addition, there is no indication that the virus is going away. In the very best case scenario, COVID-19 will become truly endemic. Endemic means that a disease is constantly present in a certain geographic area or in a certain group of people. Endemic does not mean there is no threat, but that the threat is predictable and steady in certain regions. 

In the worst case scenario, COVID-19 will reach pandemic levels once again, meaning that a disease is exponentially worsening unpredictably across geographic regions. Some infectious disease experts have warned that there is about a 20% chance that sometime in the next few years there is a COVID-19 outbreak that causes the level of illness caused by the omicron variant, especially in the winter of 2021 and 2022. Some experts have suggested that this risk could be as high as 40%.

These predictions make it clear that even though the WHO and individual countries are declaring COVID-19 over as an emergency, the risk of a COVID-19 emergency is not entirely behind us. Many factors will influence how the COVID-19 virus will evolve and affect us in the coming years, such as travel, vaccination levels, infection levels, masking, and government resources. But by far the greatest factor is virus variants and if a new dangerous variant or subvariant emerges. 

The WHO declaring that COVID-19 is officially no longer a global health emergency isn’t meant to deny this possibility, but rather act based on the data we have now. Instead, it’s mean to end the emergency state that we’re in and begin tackling COVID-19 as we do with other ongoing diseases (like the flu), while staying prepared for the possibility that COVID-19 could become an emergency again. The WHO will continue monitoring data for this possibility and will declare a health emergency once again if that is what trends are indicating.

On Friday, May 5, 2023, the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 is officially no longer a global health emergency. This announcement has understandably caused some confusion about what this means for specific countries and individuals, and about if COVID-19 is still causing harm. 

It has also caused a range of reactions. Some reactions have been based in anger about the decision – with claims that this is very bad for the fight against the COVID-19 virus. Other reactions have been overly positive about this decision – with claims that this should have happened long ago. The truth is somewhere in the middle. The WHO is not trying to suggest that the fight against COVID-19 is over, but that the fight has moved into the stage that other endemic viruses are in. 

Take the flu, for example. The flu first appeared in 1918 and then became a pandemic, infecting one-third of the world's population. At some point, around 1921, the virus became more predictable and less out of control. As a result, it became known as an endemic virus, rather than a virus causing a pandemic. The same type of transition is happening with COVID-19. This does not mean, however, that COVID-19 could not become a pandemic once again.