According to the WHO, the Covid-?19 pandemic, which contributed to the deaths of at least 6.9 million people worldwide along with other infectious diseases, is no longer a global health emergency. According to the WHO, the actual death toll was “likely” closer to 20 million, or nearly three times the official estimate. The virus continued to pose a serious threat, and it is now up to individual nations to handle cases that occurred within their borders.
The pandemic has already been declared over by the US, which also means that after May 11 no longer free vaccines and other assistance will be available. It should be noted that a sudden increase in cases occurred in China shortly after precautionary measures against Covid-19 were abandoned.
Globally as well climate change is apparently set to unleash even more horror, with scientists warning that as polar ice caps melt due to global warming new viruses will be coming our way perhaps from zoological or biological sources as humans move closer to areas that have not before seen people live within them and the globe changes rapidly putting us all risk in many different ways. Water scarcity is another threat as is famine in other countries, all of which contribute to death due to infectious disease as we see in our country and in so many others in the underdeveloped world. While we can heave a sigh of relief that the nightmare that was the peak of Covid-?19 may have come to an end, vigilance remains important as does a continuous search for ways to make this world less frightening for future generations.
Covid-19 has been a global emergency for over three years. That now comes to an end as across the world the number of cases has fallen from a peak of more than 100,000 people per week in January 2021 to just over 3,500 on April 24. Pakistan was one of the luckier countries as the virus took relatively few bodies (though some say the official death toll may be the victim of some underreporting). Even now we do not know how many Covid cases occur each day because of a lack of testing and lack of awareness notably in rural areas.
However, complacency should not result from the eradication of the Covid-?19 virus and the global emergency it sparked, unlike the Spanish flu many decades earlier. It is even more crucial to remind people that the virus is very much alive and well, and that it may even continue to mutate, and that any signs of it should prompt an attempt at the bare minimum of isolation, testing, and vaccination (if not already done).
The worst thing any nation can do right now, according to the head of the WHO, is to use these revelations as an excuse to let down its guard, to undermine the systems it has put in place, or to tell its citizens not to worry about the Covid-19 virus. Pakistan is the only nation besides Afghanistan that hasn’t succeeded in completely eradicating the polio virus from its territory. That’s not all, either.
