An unprecedented chapter in global public health has drawn to a close — at least according to international and U.S. public health officials. The seemingly interminable thrall of the COVID-19 pandemic, which held the world in a state of alarm for three harrowing years, is being declared over.

As of this month, public health organizations around the world have been called upon by the World Health Organization to end their pandemic public health emergencies.

Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

WHO’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee discussed the pandemic on Thursday at its 15th meeting on Covid-19, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus concurred that the public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, declaration should end.

“For more than a year the pandemic has been on a downward trend,” Tedros said at a news conference Friday.

The World Health Organization declared an end to the Covid-19 emergency, signaling that one of the most deadly and economically devastating pandemics in modern history is receding as the disease that caused it becomes a routine illness. 

Covid-19 is here to stay, but the pandemic has been in a downward trend for more than a year because people around the world have built up immunity to the virus, the WHO said on Friday. The trend has enabled most countries to return to pre-pandemic life, even as Covid-19 continues to spread.

The Covid pandemic is no longer a global emergency, according to leaders at the World Health Organization (WHO) — a symbolic moment that the virus's reign over the world is near its end.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the United Nations organization, said Friday: 'It's with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency.'

However, WHO officials say the virus remains a threat and the pandemic persists. While the virus poses a minimal threat to the developed world, it remains a danger in other areas.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that Covid-19 no longer represents a "global health emergency".

The statement represents a major step towards ending the pandemic and comes three years after it first declared its highest level of alert over the virus.

Officials said the virus' death rate had dropped from a peak of more than 100,000 people per week in January 2021 to just over 3,500 on 24 April.

The head of the WHO said at least seven million people died in the pandemic.

For three years now, the debate over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has ping-ponged between two big ideas: that SARS-CoV-2 spilled into human populations directly from a wild-animal source, and that the pathogen leaked from a lab. Through a swirl of data obfuscation by Chinese authorities and politicalization within the United States, and rampant speculation from all corners of the world, many scientists have stood by the notion that this outbreak—like most others—had purely natural roots.

A new analysis of genetic information conducted by an international group of researchers has found evidence to suggest that COVID-19 originated from infected animals sold at a market in Wuhan, China.

As first reported by The Atlantic, French evolutionary biologist Florence Débarre recently uncovered genetic data from the global virology database GISAID. The data had been submitted by Chinese researchers who collected the genetic sequences from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which has been scrutinized as being the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A group of scientists who have long pushed the theory that COVID-19 may have emerged from a Wuhan, China, wet market has now pushed fresh claims involving raccoon dogs that have not been peer-reviewed — after the Wuhan lab leak possibility gained credence in recent weeks.

The World Health Organization has warned that China is under-representing the true impact of Covid in the country - in particular deaths.

The removal of most restrictions last month has led to a surge in cases.

But China has stopped publishing daily cases data, and has announced only 22 Covid deaths since December, using its own strict criteria.

"We believe that definition [of a Covid death] is too narrow," WHO emergencies director Dr Michael Ryan said.

Chinese officials must share more real-time information on Covid in the country as infections surge, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

Many of the country's strict restrictions have been lifted over the last few weeks, but cases have soared and several countries are now screening travellers from China.

WHO officials say they want to see more data on hospitalisations, intensive care unit admissions and deaths.

It also wants figures on vaccinations.