The World Health Organisation has today (Friday, May 5) downgraded the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning it is no longer classed as a global emergency.

The announcement marks a symbolic end to the devastating coronavirus pandemic that triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies and killed at least seven million people worldwide.

Despite the emergency phase coming to an end, WHO has said that the pandemic is still not over, citing recent case spikes in south-east Asia and the middle east.

The UN has also said that thousands of people are still dying from the virus every week.

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In the North East, ONS figures show that there were 8,746 registered Covid related deaths in the first two years of the pandemic.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “It’s with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency.

“That does not mean Covid-19 is over as a global health threat. Covid has changed our world and it has changed us,” he said, warning that the risk of new variants still remained.

In the North East, ONS figures show that there were 8,746 registered Covid related deaths in the first two years of the pandemic.

Dr Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief, said it was incumbent on heads of states and other leaders to decide on how future health threats should be faced, given the numerous problems that crippled the world’s response to Covid-19.

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Countries are negotiating a pandemic treaty that some hope may spell out how future disease threats will be faced — but it is unlikely any such treaty would be legally binding.

When the UN health agency first declared the coronavirus to be an international crisis on January 30 2020, it had not yet been named Covid-19 and there were no major outbreaks beyond China.

More than three years later, the virus has caused an estimated 764 million cases globally and about five billion people have received at least one dose of vaccine.

Countries, including the UK, Germany and France, dropped many of their provisions against the pandemic last year.

When Dr Tedros declared Covid-19 an emergency in 2020, he said his greatest fear was the virus’s potential to spread in countries with weak health systems he described as “ill-prepared”.

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In fact, some of the countries that suffered the worst Covid-19 death tolls were previously judged to be the best-prepared for a pandemic, including the US and UK. According to WHO data, the number of deaths reported in Africa account for just 3% of the global total.

The WHO made its decision to lower its highest level of alert on Friday, after convening an expert group on Thursday.

The UN agency does not “declare” pandemics, but first used the term to describe the outbreak in March 2020, when the virus had spread to every continent except Antarctica, long after many other scientists had said a pandemic was already underway.