WHO Downgrades COVID Pandemic, Says It’s No Longer Emergency
The World Health Organization said Friday that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency, marking a symbolic end to the devastating coronavirus pandemic that triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies and killed millions of people worldwide. The announcement, made more than three years after WHO declared the coronavirus an international crisis, offers a coda to a pandemic that stirred fear and suspicion, hand-wringing and finger-pointing across the globe. The U.N. health agency's officials said that even though the emergency phase was over, the pandemic hasn't ended, noting recent spikes in cases in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. WHO says thousands of people are still dying from the virus every week, and millions of others are suffering from debilitating, long-term effects. "It's with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over…