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A year ago the W.H.O. said that 15 million more people had died in the first two years of the pandemic than would have in normal times, a figure that laid bare how vastly countries had undercounted victims. In Egypt, excess deaths were roughly 12 times as great as the official Covid toll; in Pakistan, the figure was eight times as high. Developing nations bore the brunt of the devastation, with nearly eight million more people than expected dying in lower-middle-income nations by the end of 2021.
And Covid continues to spread: The W.H.O. recorded 2.8 million new cases globally, and more than 17,000 deaths, from April 3 to 30, the most recent numbers available. As many countries have reduced their testing for Covid, these numbers also probably represent a significant undercount.
The W.H.O.’s emergency declaration was a crucial piece of guidance when it was made on Jan. 30, 2020, when just 213 people were known to have died of the virus. It signaled to the world that this new virus posed a threat outside of China, where it emerged, and gave countries critical buttressing to impose potentially unpopular or disruptive public health measures.
The virus that jumped into humans in late 2019 proved to be an unpredictable adversary, mutating swiftly and significantly in ways that allowed it to resurge and devastate countries just as they thought the worst was past. A brutal wave of the Delta variant ravaged India just weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi bragged about how well the country had done in its Covid response. The Omicron variant, while less virulent, spread with a deceptive ease that made it the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States in 2022, and a major killer in many other countries.
The first large-scale vaccinations began on Dec. 8, 2020, less than a year after the first case of the disease was reported to the W.H.O., an extraordinary triumph of science. But the collaborative process of vaccine development was followed by a grim period of hoarding and nationalism; a full year later, when people in industrialized countries were receiving second and third doses of the vaccine, just five percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa had been vaccinated.
Dr. Githinji Gitahi, executive director of Amref Health Africa, said it was time to lift the emergency. “The danger of keeping it forever is diluting the tool — you need it to retain its force,” he said. The declaration helped to mobilize resources for Africa, he said, but did nothing to counter the bleak experience of what he called “vaccine injustice.” Amref continues to work on supporting vaccination in 35 African countries; continent-wide, coverage now stands at 52 percent.
The pandemic also has a positive legacy, Dr. Gitahi said, because it spurred the highest level of cooperation ever seen among African countries, including the creation of an African Union task force to coordinate procurement of vaccines.
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