Pins matching tag:"Public Health Emergency"

Eight months after the first cases in Guinea, the WHO declared the Ebola epidemic in West Africa a public health emergency of international concern. It became the largest Ebola outbreak in history: more than 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Six weeks after declaring a public health emergency, the WHO's Director-General told a Geneva briefing that COVID-19 could be characterised as a pandemic - 118,000 cases in 114 countries at the time. Most of the world's lockdowns began within a fortnight.

Three years and three months after declaring it, the WHO ended COVID-19's status as a public health emergency of international concern. The Director-General was careful to say the virus was not gone - only that it no longer needed emergency governance.