The organisation that declared the COVID-19 pandemic a public health emergency on 30 January 2020 is now saying .
In his most optimistic assessment yet of the state of play with COVID-19 globally, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said global case numbers are trending downwards.
"Last week, the number of weekly reported deaths from COVID-19 was the lowest since March 2020," he said in the latest WHO news briefing.
"We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic. We're not there yet, but the end is in sight."
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the newly reported COVID-19 cases last week fell to the lowest level since March 2020. Source: SBS News
In , he said the WHO has outlined measures - based on the experience of the last 32 months - to "save lives, protect health systems, and avoid social and economic disruption".
"These policy briefs are an urgent call for governments to take a hard look at their policies, and strengthen them for COVID-19 and future pathogens with pandemic potential."
The virus, which emerged in China in late 2019, has killed almost 6.5 million people and infected 606 million, based on official numbers.
The WHO's on Wednesday reported 11,000 fatalities between 5 and 11 September, representing a 22 per cent decrease compared with the previous week.
Deaths increased by 10 per cent in the African region, but dropped in the five other regions: European Region (31 per cent), South-East Asia Region (25 per cent), Region of the Americas (22 per cent), Western Pacific Region (11 per cent) and the Eastern Mediterranean Region (10 per cent).
Optimism as virus moves to 'endemic phase'
Nigel McMillan, an infectious diseases expert at Queensland's Griffith University, said he sees the virus moving into an "endemic" phase.
"While the virus isn't gone, it's still there. And that's why we call it endemic, the virus doesn't spread around as quickly as it did before."
He attributes that to increased immunity in the community from vaccination and re-infection rates.
Professor McMillan said he shared Dr Tedros' optimism about the potential to see the end of the pandemic.
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"I would probably reflect on this as being more influenza virus-like, which is a situation most people can understand. Certainly, our numbers have now come down from our three waves that we've had this year. And we have a low number of average cases, although still a significant number of cases. But certainly, we're coming into the summer period. And these are essentially winter respiratory viruses. So we would expect our caseload to come down," he said.
"And we're really starting to look at the end run now towards an endemic phase — the thing we want to really look out for mostly is what's going to happen in the northern hemisphere, in their winter, our summer, and whether we get a new variant coming through. That's the one thing that might just put a bit of a spanner in the works."
A National Cabinet meeting on Wednesday resulted in the federal government deciding to retain indefinitely for those in mandatory isolation.
Professor McMillan said public policymakers need to be ready to adjust policies in the event of a stronger COVID variant.
"It's a dial. If a new COVID wave emerges, we'll want to dial back up [the policy settings] to limit the spread of any new variants. I think people inherently understand that's just where we are at the moment. And over the ensuing years, we'll see the virus settle down into an endemic phase where just like influenza, we'll see peaks and troughs," he said.
Australia's transmission levels cause concern
Professor Brendan Crabb, an infectious disease researcher at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, said it would be a mistake to think the pandemic is winding down in Australia, considering the high levels of virus transmission.
"From an Australian perspective, it's easily the worst year we've had. 12,000 people died of COVID this year," he said.
"We had about 2,000 people die in the previous two years. We've had 10 million people infected in Australia, in just the last eight or nine months of this year."
A map shows the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases (per capita) in countries around the world as of 12 September 2022. Credit: Our World in Data
"In places like Papa New Guinea, 10 million people - the closest country to Australia has north - only about 5 per cent of the population is doubly vaccinated. Pretty much the whole of the African continent is severely under-vaccinated and many are not vaccinated at all. So we're still miles behind equitable access to vaccines," he said.
"If we're going to end the pandemic, getting vaccinated with the existing vaccines and the new ones is absolutely crucial. Unfortunately, at the moment, we're in a situation where over two billion people in the world have not received a single dose."
'Ending won't be clear-cut'
WHO's next meeting of experts to decide whether the pandemic still represents a public health emergency of international concern is due in October.
Robert Cumming, Emeritus Professor of epidemiology at the University of Sydney, said the end to the pandemic won't be clear-cut.
Part of the conundrum is there will be different endings to the pandemic: medical and social.
"I think it's important to think how we look at a pandemic. So there's the purely numeric epidemiological point of view, which is number of cases. And as the number of cases come down, eventually we'll reach a number where we say that the pandemic is over quantitatively.
"But I actually think there's much more to a pandemic than that - it's the way that the disease affects society."
Recently returned from Europe where he spent time in Iceland and the UK, Professor Cumming said people are operating like they were pre-pandemic when it came to social distancing and adherence to masks.
"I've just been overseas to Europe. And in much of the world, from a social perspective, the pandemic is already over [socially]. All the legal requirements related to COVID have gone for many countries in Europe, and people are living their life like they did in 2019. I don't think we're quite there in Australia yet, but I think we're getting close."
"I think the pandemic - I use the term as a social phenomenon - is over. COVID is still around, and it will be a disease that we'll need to deal with forever using clinical and public health means."
