President Joe Biden stated the COVID-19 pandemic is "over" but conceded the US still has trouble with the disease that has killed over 1 million Americans.
"The pandemic is over," said Biden, who admitted that COVID-19 remains to be a problem for the country. Though the US government is working hard in addressing the issue, he remarked.
The World Health Organization (WHO) still consider COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and the US governement still classifies it as a public health emergency, according to ABC17 News. However, President Biden's remarks come after other upbeat ones from prominent figures in international health.
The End Is Near for COVID-19 Pandemic
In a news briefing last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared that the COVID-19 pandemic's end was "in sight."
The WHO chief noted: "Last week, the number of weekly reported deaths from Covid-19 was the lowest since March 2020. We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic. We're not there yet, but the end is in sight."
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised its COVID-19 recommendation last month to advise the country to abandon measures like quarantines and social seclusion and instead concentrate on lowering serious diseases from COVID-19.
However, the organization notes that some people, especially those who are older, immunocompromised, have specific impairments or underlying medical issues, are at a higher risk for serious infection and may need to take additional measures.
According to research from Johns Hopkins University, there were around 65,000 new COVID-19 cases reported daily over the last two weeks.
The number of reported cases is decreasing in practically every state. Approximately 400 individuals each day across the country die from COVID-19.
CDC predictions suggest additional hospitalizations and fatalities will remain stable over the next month, despite low official case counts.
According to research released last week by the CDC, for those hospitalized with COVID-19, the chance of death decreased to the lowest level it has ever been during the Omicron wave.
Researchers propose many variables contributed to the lowered mortality risk: high levels of protection from vaccination and past infection, breakthroughs in therapies, and Omicron subvariants that were less likely to cause illness.
COVID-19 Still Impacts Millions
NBC News reported that COVID-19 continues to stifle the labor supply, according to a paper released last week by the National Bureau of Economic Research. A half-million persons, or 0.2% of all adults, were thought to have left the workforce in the United States as a result of the outbreak of the disease.
Moreover, the pandemic impacted supply chains, causing shortages of vital items, inflation, factory closures, emptied shipping containers, and other "negative repercussions on a nation's economic prosperity," according to FTI Consulting, an international business consulting group.
Worldwide, 612 million people got infected with the coronavirus. According to Our World in Data, a global association of scientists, the number of new daily cases peaked in January for numerous nations, including the U.S. (806,987), France (366,554), and India (311,982), NPR reported.
On Saturday, there were about 493,000 cases around the world-but there are still thousands of new cases every day, and many estimates could be off because many cases are not being reported.
From Aug. 16 to Sept. 17, there were 19.4 million new cases globally, including rises in Japan (29%), Taiwan (20%), and Hong Kong (19%). During that time, there were 2.5 million more events in the US or a 3% increase.
