The WHO declared an end to the global COVID-19 emergency, urging countries to begin transitioning their response to a virus that it warns still remains a global health threat.
"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," Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO's director general stated.
The WHO's move follows a meeting of the United Nations Agency's Emergency Committee Thursday, more than three years after the panel had first recommended in 2020 that the WHO declare an emergency over the outbreak in China, CBS News reported.
Several nations have already ended their own national COVID-19 emergencies, or plan to do so soon.
According to the official statistics, COVID-19 claimed the lives of more than 20 million people throughout the world since the outbreak of the pandemic, and about 677 million people in the world have tested positive for the coronavirus.