The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, 14 (14), that it expects covid-19 and monkeypox to cease to be public health emergencies by 2023, as both diseases have passed their most dangerous stages.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the WHO, said that the weekly death toll from Covid-19 is about one-fifth of the figure a year ago.

“Less than 10,000 people died (due to covid) in the last week. There are still 10,000 more deaths and countries can still do a lot to save lives,” he said at a press conference.

“But we’ve come a long way. We hope in the next year that we can say that Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency,” he said.

Tedros also said that the WHO emergency committee, which advised him on public health emergency notifications of international importance (PHEIC, acronym) will begin discussing in January how the emergency phase will end.

“This virus will not go away. It will stay here and all countries will have to learn to deal with it, as with other respiratory diseases,” he reminded, reminding that there is still a lot of uncertainty and that in low–income countries only one in five people is vaccinated.

As for monkeypox, more than 82,000 cases have been reported in 110 countries since the state of emergency was declared in July, but the mortality rate remains very low, with only 65 deaths.

“Fortunately, the number of cases has dropped by more than 90%,” said the WHO director. “If this trend continues, we hope that next year we will be able to declare the end of this state of emergency,” he added.