<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>The World Health Organization said Wednesday it hoped that Covid-19 would no longer be a public health emergency in 2023, as it urged China to share information that could pinpoint how the pandemic started.</b></span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As the third anniversary of the original outbreak rolls around, the WHO said the virus was here to stay but would need managing alongside other respiratory illnesses.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the weekly Covid death toll was now around a fifth of what it was a year ago -- but was still far too high.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Last week, less than 10,000 people lost their lives. That's still 10,000 too many and there is still a lot that all countries can do to save lives," he told a press conference.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But we have come a long way. We are hopeful that at some point next year, we will be able to say that Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The WHO's emergency committee on Covid-19, which advises Tedros on whether the virus constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), will discuss the criteria for declaring an end to the emergency phase when they next meet in January.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's Covid-19 technical lead, said the committee would look at the epidemiology, variants like Omicron, and the impact of the virus.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While waves of infection are still expected, the pandemic "is not what it was in the beginning", with cases resulting in fewer hospitalisations and deaths, she said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"These deaths are largely happening among people who are not vaccinated," or have not received their full course of jabs, Van Kerkhove said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While the WHO says more than 13 billion vaccine doses have been administered, around 30 percent of the world has not received a single dose, she added.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b><br></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>- Covid origins -</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nearly 650 million confirmed Covid cases and more than 6.6 million deaths have been reported to the WHO, though the UN health agency acknowledges this will be a vast undercount.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Tedros said that as the world looks to end the Covid emergency, which has upended economies and left millions suffering ongoing symptoms, it needs to understand how the pandemic began.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first cases of Covid-19 were recorded in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We continue to call on China to share the data and conduct the studies that we have requested, to better understand the origins of this virus," Tedros said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"All hypotheses remain on the table," he said, adding that this includes the theory that the virus escaped from Wuhan's virology laboratories.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan said the organisation could not simply stop engaging with Beijing "because you're not cooperating with us on the origins", as a huge chunk of the world's population live in China.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b>- New vaccines hope -</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">Tedros said the virus had been around so long, it was almost part of the family.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This virus will not go away. It's here to stay and all countries will need to learn to manage it alongside other respiratory illnesses," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The WHO's vaccines chief Kate O'Brien said that the current crop of Covid jabs do not prevent people from catching the virus to the level that had been hoped for.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">"We would love to have vaccines that are more effective against infection and transmission and have greater duration of protection," O'Brien said, calling for more ongoing investment in research and development.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b>- Mpox declining -</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Mpox -- formerly known as monkeypox -- Tedros said the global outbreak this year had taken the world by surprise.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But like Covid, the emergency phase should be over within 12 months, he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">More than 82,000 cases have been reported from 110 countries, although the mortality rate has remained low, with 65 deaths.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Thankfully, the number of weekly reported cases has declined more than 90 percent since I declared a PHEIC in July," said Tedros.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"If the current trend continues, we're hopeful that next year we'll also be able to declare an end to this emergency." AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>