The World Health Organization (WHO) said that Covid-19 is no longer a
global health emergency and that member states should lift all Covid-19
international travel-related health measures, based on risk
assessments, and not require vaccination as a prerequisite for
international travel.
The news comes more than three years after first declaring the
emergency in January 2020 and one week before the US will end its
Covid-19 public health emergency designation, on 11 May. It also comes
on the heels of the Biden administration’s decision earlier this week to
repeal its vaccine requirement for inbound international air travelers,
also starting 11 May
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news
conference on 5 May that the virus has been on a “downward trend" for
more than a year.
And while he stressed that Covid was still a threat, the WHO stated
that “high population-level immunity from infection, vaccination or
both” have contributed to a significant global decline in the number of
Covid-related deaths and hospitalisations since the beginning of the
pandemic. In addition, current variants do not appear to be associated
with increased severity.
Ghebreyesus said that these trends have “allowed most countries to return to life as we knew it before Covid-19."
Source: Travel Weekly