In a statement to the Congress last January 30, 2023, US President Joe Biden said that he will end both the Public Health Emergency (declared last January 31, 2020) and the National Emergency declaring COVID a pandemic (declared March 2020) on May 11, 2023.

On the same day, Politico published an article entitled “COVID-19 still a global health emergency, says WHO”. It cited World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirming that the organization’s COVID-19 emergency committee had advised that COVID-19 still poses a public risk. The article also quoted Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance who said, “While the world has made remarkable progress over the last two years, implementing the largest and fastest global vaccine rollout in history, we cannot afford to be complacent.”

Editor’s Note: While the rest of the world has already moved on from COVID, the WHO is stuck in 2020. The Politico article says, “The committee recommended that a proposal be developed for an alternative mechanism that would maintain international focus on COVID-19, even after the crisis is no longer classified as a PHEIC.” What could this “alternative mechanism” be?

For the Philippines, we know that this will come in the form of the Philippine CDC [see Open Letter To Our Senators: You Must Exercise Due Diligence on the Bill Creating the Philippine CDC]. For the rest of the world, this will be through the Pandemic Treaty [see World Council for Health Sounds Alarms on WHO’s pandemic treaty initiative].

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