Covid-19 no longer represents a global emergency, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared on Friday. The announcement represents a symbolic step towards the end of a pandemic that has taken more than 6.9 million lives and disrupted billions of others.
It comes more than three years after the WHO raised the alert level to its highest, on 30 January 2020.
Lowering it demonstrates the extent of international progress on vaccines and treatments, but Covid-19 is here to stay, the organisation warned.