• Pandemic WHO continues to consider Covid an international public health emergency

After three years of living with the virus in a state of pandemic, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has announced that the WHO has declared the end of the global health emergency due to Covid-19.

"Yesterday, the Emergency Committee met for the fifteenth time and recommended that I declare an end to the public health emergency of international concern. I have accepted that advice," he said. Emergency Committee meetings take place quarterly. And in January they considered that it was not yet the time to make this decision.

The WHO director then explained that the COVID-19 pandemic was a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), which could be at a "turning point" or "transition".

Now, with that moment of transition over, thanks to vaccines and the availability of treatments, the risk posed by the virus a few years ago has disappeared. "It was a decision taken with caution. I will not hesitate to declare an emergency again if the situation changes," said Tedros.

On Thursday, at the start of the meetings, the head of the organization acknowledged that the world wants to "turn the page" regarding the Covid-19 pandemic. "The downward trend has continued (since the previous meeting of the committee in January) and in the past 10 weeks the number of deaths has been successively registering minimum figures that were not seen since March 2020," he said.

This trend "has allowed life to return to 'normal' in many countries, and has increased the capacity of health systems to respond to potential outbreaks, as well as the problem of post-covid symptoms," the Ethiopian expert analyzed.

Tedros warned, as in previous interventions, that despite the possible declaration of the end of the health emergency this year, "the virus is here to stay, and all countries will have to learn to manage it like other infectious diseases."

He also noted that the reduction in tests and traces that has led to the decline in severe cases makes it difficult to predict the appearance of future variants of the virus, and recalled that the unequal distribution of treatments and vaccines against the disease, still scarce in many developing countries, continues.

The impact of Covid in Spain

The autonomous communities have notified the Ministry of Health this Friday of 11,847 new cases of COVID-19, compared to 11,222 on the same day two weeks ago, of which 7,397 have occurred in people over 60 years old.

The total number of infections in Spain has already risen to 13,845,825 since the beginning of the pandemic, according to official statistics. The incidence in people over 60 stands at 93.96 in the last 14 days per 100,000, compared to 89.49 two weeks ago. In the past two weeks, a total of 11,808 positives have been registered in this age group.

Friday's report added 249 new deaths. Up to 120,964 people with a positive diagnostic test have died since the virus arrived in Spain, according to data collected by the Ministry. In the last week, 65 people have died with confirmed positive in Spain.

Currently, there are 2,510 patients admitted and positive for COVID-19 throughout Spain (2,331 two weeks ago) and 109 in ICU (105 two Fridays ago). The occupancy rate of beds occupied by coronavirus stands at 2.02 percent (1.87% 14 days ago) and in ICUs at 1.24 percent (1.20% two weeks ago).

However, of all of them, only 53.4 percent of those admitted to acute beds are admitted due to a clinical picture caused by COVID-19 and 57.8 percent in the intensive care unit (ICU), with data as of April 13.

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