The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday announced that Covid-19 continues to remain a public health emergency of international concern but added that the pandemic is currently at a “transition point”, suggesting that a change may be in the offing later this year.

The decision by director general WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was based on recommendations made by the International Health Regulations Emergency (IHR) Committee of the multilateral agency.

Several countries were waiting for WHO’s decision on whether or not the pandemic is to be considered a public health threat of international magnitude because this will influence their own policies. There was some expectation that WHO would change its current stance, but recent outbreaks of Covid-19 may have worked against that.

“The WHO Director-General concurs with the advice offered by the Committee regarding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and determines that the event continues to constitute a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC),” said the UN health body in a statement on Monday.

The 7-day average of daily cases on January 25 was 219378 according to worldometers.info. At its peak this number was in excess of 3 million. However, recent outbreaks powered by newer and more infectious sub-variants of the virus, such as the one seen in China, have concerned public health experts and policy makers across the world. Between January 13 and 19, China reported around 13,000 Covid-rlated deaths, numbers that came on the back of around 60,000 deaths between December 8 and January 12.

It is likely that some of this influenced WHO’s decision.

“The Director-General 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,” added the statement.

The 14th meeting of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee regarding Covid-19 was held on Friday, January 27, 2023, from 2pm-5pm Central European Time.

The committee agreed that Covid-19 remains a dangerous infectious disease with the capacity to cause substantial damage to health and health systems.

“The committee acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic may be approaching an inflexion point. Achieving higher levels of population immunity globally, either through infection and/or vaccination, may limit the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on morbidity and mortality, but there is little doubt that this virus will remain a permanently established pathogen in humans and animals for the foreseeable future,” WHO’s statement read.

“As such, long-term public health action is critically needed. While eliminating this virus from human and animal reservoirs is highly unlikely, mitigation of its devastating impact on morbidity and mortality is achievable and should continue to be a prioritized goal,” the statement added.

The committee, which meets every three months, is chaired by French doctor Didier Houssin.

It has been three years since the UN health body declared the outbreak emerging from China’s Wuhan province a global pandemic.

The emergency committee held its first meeting on January 22-23, 2020. On January 30, following its second meeting, WHO declared that the outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern

On Monday, the director general also issued a set of revised temporary recommendations to countries based on the committee’s advice.

WHO asked countries to maintain their momentum for Covid-19 vaccination to achieve 100% coverage of high-priority groups guided by the evolving SAGE (Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization) recommendations on the use of booster doses.

The UN health body also asked for improved reporting of Sars-CoV-2 surveillance data, as better data are needed to detect, assess, and monitor emerging variants; identify significant changes to Covid-19 epidemiology; and understand the disease burden in all regions.

“Surveillance should incorporate information from representative sentinel populations, event-based surveillance, human wastewater surveillance, sero-surveillance, and animal-human environmental surveillance… to recognise quickly any significant changes in the virus and/or its epidemiology and clinical impact including hospitalization, so that WHO can trigger appropriate global alerting as necessary…” WHO’s statement said.

WHO’s other recommendations include continuing to work with communities and their leaders to address information (and misinformation) related aspects of the pandemic, effectively implement risk-based public health and social measures, continue to adjust any remaining international travel-related measures, based on risk assessment, not require proof of vaccination against Covid-19 as a prerequisite for international travel, and support research for improved vaccines that reduce transmission and have broad applicability.

Before the committee’s meeting last week, the WHO chief, while pointing to at least 170,000 deaths from the virus in the past two months reported from different parts of the world, said that the emergency phase of the pandemic was not yet over.