Long Covid was devastating lives and livelihoods and wreaking havoc on health systems and economies, Tedros told the Guardian last year as he urged countries to launch immediate and sustained efforts to tackle the “very serious” crisis. The condition is estimated to affect one in 10 people who contract Covid, suggesting hundreds of millions of people could need longer-term care, he has said. He has also warned of the ongoing impact of long Covid, which provokes a long line of often severe and debilitating symptoms that can drag on for months or years. This week, Tedros said testing and tracing efforts had “declined significantly around the world, making it more difficult to track known variants and detect new ones”. Covid deaths globally have plunged by 95% since January, but the disease still killed 16,000 people worldwide last month alone.ĭespite the lingering danger, the pandemic has faded from mind in many if not most countries. It said the true figures were likely to be much higher. “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,” he said.Ĭovid has officially claimed more than 6.9 million lives, and affected the health of more than 765 million others, according to the WHO. Tedros said the decision to downgrade the alert status did not mean the danger was over, cautioning that the emergency status could be reinstated if the situation changed. The WHO does not declare the beginning or end of pandemics, although it did start using the term for Covid in March 2020. Lifting it is a sign of the progress the world has made in these areas, but Covid-19 is here to stay, health officials believe, even if it no longer represents an emergency. The global health emergency status helped focus international attention on the Covid threat, as well as bolstering collaboration on vaccines and treatments. Last week, Covid-19 claimed a life every three minutes – and that’s just the deaths we know about.” However, that does not mean Covid-19 is over as a global health threat. He added: “It’s therefore with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency. “Yesterday, the emergency committee met for the 15th time and recommended to me that I declare an end to the public health emergency of international concern,” said Tedros. The disease still killed someone every three minutes, he said. A 20% rate increase in Medicare payments for hospital treatment of COVID-19 is lifting, though Schindler said the switch won't hurt hospitals too much because the number of patients with COVID-19 has declined.While the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced on Friday the UN health agency was downgrading Covid’s alert status, he also delivered a stark warning about its persistent threat.Hospitals are also pushing against the reinstatement of an old rule that required Medicare patients to be admitted for at least three days before they could be transferred to nursing facilities.Joe Schindler, a vice president at the Minnesota Hospital Association, previously said that made small hospitals more effective in treating serious illnesses with aid from video consults by specialists - thus easing a bed crunch in urban hospitals. Small, rural critical-access hospitals are losing flexibility around the ability to increase bed capacities and keep patients checked in for longer.Many health plans will continue to fully cover COVID vaccinations, but patients are likely to lose access to free at-home COVID-19 tests while also experiencing new or increased co-pays for COVID treatment.The end of the federal emergency means changes for hospitals and how they interact with COVID sufferers. federal public health emergency in response to the spread of COVID-19, another big step in the slow shift back to normalcy after a pandemic that exceeded three years and forced major worldwide disruptions.
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