Covid-19 will soon be comparable to the threat of seasonal flu, said the World Health Organization on Friday, which hopes to lower its maximum alert level once more this year.
“I think we’re getting to the point where we can look at Covid-19 the same way we look at seasonal flu, which is a health threat, a virus that will continue to kill, but a virus that doesn’t disrupt our society or our hospital systems,” WHO emergency programs chief Michael Ryan told a news conference.
Beside him, the Director General of the WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was “very pleased to note that, for the first time, the weekly number of deaths reported over the past four weeks has been lower than when we first used the word ‘pandemic’ three years ago.
“We are certainly in a much better position today than at any time during the pandemic,” he observed. He was thus “confident” that the WHO might lower its maximum alert level “this year”.
Agencies