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The 194 members of the World Health Organization pushed ahead this week with talks on a global agreement aimed at improving pandemic prevention and preparedness and avoiding some of the mistakes that were made in the handling of the COVID-19 emergency.
More than three years after the start of the pandemic, talks were held at the fifth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, or INB, which represents the WHO member countries, according to a statement from the agency.
The delegates agreed to keep the window open for additional written proposals until April 22, after which a draft including all submissions will be prepared for a May 22 deadline. The INB will reconvene in June to hold further talks.
“The world realizes that what we want and need to achieve is an accord that will help us not to repeat the mistakes of the COVID-19 pandemic response,” said Roland Driece of the Netherlands, who is co-chair of the INB Bureau. “There are many proposals and constructive suggestions on the table for how to do this.”
The WHO has said it expects to be able to declare an end to the COVID pandemic some time this year, signaling it has become endemic, or present but no longer devastating healthcare systems. The virus will then be treated more like seasonal flu, something that can be managed with an annual booster shot.
Separately, the WHO said it had recorded nearly 3.3 million new COVID cases in the 28-day period through April 2, down 28% from the prior 28-day period. It counted more than 23,000 deaths from COVID, down 30% from the previous period.
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“Despite this overall downward trend, it is important to note that 74 (31%) countries have reported increases in new cases of 20% or greater during the last 28 days compared to the previous 28-day period,” the WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update.
As of April 2, over 762 million confirmed cases and over 6.8 million deaths have been reported globally.
As has become its custom, the WHO cautioned that the numbers are likely an undercount, as prevalence surveys show higher numbers of infections and reinfections. Most countries, including the U.S., have scaled back surveillance of the virus and greatly reduced testing.
In March, Johns Hopkins University stopped aggregating data that had been widely used to monitor the state of the pandemic. And the New York Times has stopped gathering its own data and is instead using tools developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its daily tracking.
Those numbers are not being updated daily, but show that on April 3, there were 5,673 hospital admissions, down 6% from two weeks ago.
Cases are being updated on a weekly basis, with the latest week through March 29 showing 138,481 cases, down 16% from two weeks ago. Deaths, also now being counted on a weekly basis, totaled 1,596 on March 29, down 12% from two weeks ago.
The CDC says that 17% of the overall U.S. population has had a bivalent booster, or one that targets both omicron, the long-dominant COVID strain, and the original virus.
The WHO also said it’s closely tracking just one variant of interest — XBB.1.5 — and has seven others under monitoring, which is a less rigorous classification.
XBB.1.5 accounted for 47.1% of cases sent to a central database in the week through March 19, up from 39.8% the previous week. It has now been detected in 94 countries.
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