Is COVID Really Over?

On the 5th May Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared an end to the public health emergency of international concern.? But what does this mean?

In January 2023, the WHO executive board wrote ten proposals to build a safer world, to strengthen preparedness and response to health emergencies, these recommendations are based around 5 pillars and include:

• Collaborative surveillance
• Community protection
• Safe & Flexible care
• Access to countermeasures
• Emergency coordination

These principles have been incorporated to form the new guidelines and strategic preparedness and response plan which have been issued by WHO and are to run from April 2023- April 2025. Countries are being urged to maintain sufficient capacity, operational readiness, and flexibility to scale up during surges of COVID 19, whilst maintaining other essential health services and preparing for the emergence of new variants with increased severity or capacity. The underlying goal is to end the emergency phase of the COVID 19 pandemic in all countries and shift from an emergency response to sustainable comprehensive management of COVID 19.?

According to data collected by the WHO, around 6% of people are living with symptoms of post-acute COVID 19 condition or long COVID.? The treatment for people who are still struggling to recover is one of the key points of the new plan launched by the WHO with hundreds of millions of people in need of longer-term care now and for the foreseeable future.?

It is clear that the WHO is expressing that countries should not let their guard down against COVID 19 and to maintain sufficient capacity, operational readiness, and flexibility during COVID 19 waves. The WHO director general, Tedros, delivered a warning that COVID 19 was still a persistent threat, where the disease “claimed a life every three minutes- and that’s just the deaths we know about”.? He went on to further recommend that “the worst thing any country could do now is to use this news as a reason to let down its guard, to dismantle the systems it has built, or to send the message to its people that COVID 19 is nothing to worry about”.?

These words ring out as the UK has still to confirm its surveillance plans following ceasing the weekly collection and reporting of ONS data which ended on the 24th March. This will make it more difficult to track known variants and detect new ones. Coupled with the short-lived immunity to the disease which means that future waves of infections are therefore inevitable.? The pandemic’s impact will be felt for some time, both in terms of new cases and those already suffering from long COVID.?

This warning captures the impact of long COVID for all countries, it requires a sustained action equivalent to its scale. Governments need to invest long-term in their health systems and workers and make a plan for dealing with long COVID. In the UK we still await the NHS workforce plan, will it ever materialise?? We are now hearing leaks about the failed targets to deliver the healthcare workforce that has been promised.?

How does the world work together to ensure that we are better prepared for such emergencies in the future, whether this is caused by a new variant of COVID virus or by a completely new microbe that we have not seen?

Many scientists believe that as habitat destruction continues across the planet, and we resume global travel, new emerging viruses are likely to appear and in some cases they may spread to humans.? A question remains regarding the learning of lessons required and what do we need to do next to build institutional resilience to be better prepared for future health emergencies.? In the words of Tedros, “we must promise ourselves and our children and grandchildren that we will never make those mistakes again”.?