GENEVA, May 5. /TASS/. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency, but the pandemic itself continues, Executive Director of WHO's Health Emergencies Programme Michael Ryan said on Friday at a briefing in Geneva.

"I think there will not be a point where WHO comes along and says: ‘The pandemic is over’", he said, "The reality is this virus will continue to spread. The good news is the global health emergency is over."

Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO technical team, made similar assertions. "The emergency phase of this global crisis that we have all been facing for three and a half years is over, but [the] COVID is here to stay and we have to learn to manage this better in integrated systems because the virus isn’t going anywhere," she pointed out. "The challenge we face going forward is that this virus is evolving," the expert added, "There are thousands of people dying every week. There are hundreds of thousands of people who are in hospital. There are millions of people who are infected every week. So we have to not take our eye off the ball and while we’re not in the crisis mode, we can’t let our guard down."

A COVID emergency regime has been in effect in global public health since late January 2020. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the outbreak a pandemic.