The World Health Organisation is optimistic that the global health emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic can be lifted in 2023.

They hope is to be able to say next year “this is not a pandemic anymore,” WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva on Wednesday.

He added however: “The virus is here to stay.”

However, the world had the tools – vaccines, medicines and codes of conduct – to deal with it, he said.

The number of cases of Mpox, as monkeypox has been renamed, had also fallen by more than 90 per cent and there had been no new cases of Ebola in Uganda some time, Mr Tedros said.

“There are many reasons for hope and many reasons for concern,” he said of 2023.

He mentioned, among other things, looming famine, especially in parts of Africa, continuing poor sanitation in many places, unhealthy diets and malaria and tuberculosis.

The WHO cannot declare a pandemic “over”.

The term pandemic does not even appear in the WHO’s toolkit, the International Health Regulations.

It can only lift the “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC) described therein and declared at the end of 2020 because of the coronavirus.

The declaration of an emergency is primarily intended to wake up governments so that they take protective measures and co-operate.

However, each country imposes conditions separately.

An independent council of experts regularly examines the global situation and recommends to the WHO whether an emergency should be lifted or maintained.