WHO weighs whether to lift COVID-19 emergency status

Dwindling COVID-19 deaths may have allowed "normal" life to largely resume but uncertainties persist, the World Health Organization chief said Thursday, as experts debated if the global health emergency should be declared over.

The WHO emergency committee's 15th meeting on the crisis comes more than three years after the U.N. health agency on Jan. 30, 2020, first sounded its highest level of alarm over what was then called the novel coronavirus.

The independent committee meets every three months to discuss the pandemic and reports to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who then decides whether COVID-19 remains a so-called public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) — the highest level of alert.