U.S. President Joe Biden has declared the COVID-19 pandemic over though he admitted the virus still poses a problem for the United States.
Biden made the declaration in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" that was taped last week at the Detroit Auto Show but aired Sunday.
"The pandemic is over," Biden said. "We still have a problem with COVID. We're still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over."
US President #JoeBiden has claimed that the #Covid19 pandemic is over, as millions suffer from long Covid and several countries still bear the brunt of the #globalhealthcrisis.https://t.co/Nw4HH1E3mI
— The Interview Times (@interviewtimes2) September 19, 2022
The car show was held at a Motor City convention center following a three-year pause due to COVID-19, and as Biden walked down the aisles of vehicles he cited the show as proof that the United States was out of the pandemic.
"If you notice, no one's wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it's changing and I think this is a perfect example of it," he said.
The comment comes more than two and a half years after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, which is a global outbreak of a disease, on March 11, 2020.
On Wednesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters during a press briefing that at 11,000 deaths, the number of weekly reported fatalities to the virus was at its lowest since he declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
"We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic," he said. "We are not there yet, but the end is in sight."
The head of the U.N. health body compared fighting the virus to running a marathon and that a runner does not stop running when the finish line comes into view.
"We can see the finish line. We're in a winning position. But now is the worst time to stop running," he said. "Now is the time to run harder and make sure we cross the line and reap the rewards of all our hard work."
"Covid pandemic is over" says US President Joe Biden
— ANI Digital (@ani_digital) September 19, 2022
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The virus, which was first found in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 before spreading the world over, has infected nearly 612 million people, including 6.5 million it killed, according to a live tracker of the disease by Johns Hopkins University.
In the United States, the virus has infected nearly 100 million people while claiming a million lives, making it the sickest country to the pandemic.
This article has been adapted from its original source
