Is the COVID-19 pandemic over?

After greater than two and a half years of COVID-19 restrictions and mandates, many individuals are craving for an official nod that marks the pandemic’s finish. And watching the information final week might have led many to conclude that we’ve lastly reached that time.

World Well being Group Director-Common Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus informed reporters at a press conference that the tip of the pandemic is in sight. A number of days later, United States President Joe Biden declared throughout an interview on 60 Minutes, “The pandemic is over.” However he additionally acknowledged, “We nonetheless have an issue with COVID. We’re nonetheless doing loads of work on it.”

A pandemic is a illness outbreak spanning a number of international locations that impacts many individuals. The WHO is answerable for declaring when an outbreak has grown right into a pandemic and deciding when it stops being a public well being emergency of worldwide concern. Worldwide, COVID-19 remains to be inflicting almost 1,600 deaths every day and case numbers haven’t plateaued at a low degree, main WHO’s chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, to conclude, “It’s nonetheless a little bit untimely to say that we’re over it.”