As the third anniversary of the original outbreak rolls around, the WHO said the virus was here to stay but would need managing alongside other respiratory illnesses.
"But we have come a long way. We are hopeful that at some point next year, we will be able to say that COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency." While waves of infection are still expected, the pandemic "is not what it was in the beginning", with cases resulting in fewer hospitalisations and deaths, she said.
Tedros said that as the world looks to end the COVID emergency, which has upended economies and left millions suffering ongoing symptoms, it needs to understand how the pandemic began."We continue to call on China to share the data and conduct the studies that we have requested, to better understand the origins of this virus," Tedros said.
The WHO's vaccines chief Kate O'Brien said that the current crop of COVID jabs do not prevent people from catching the virus to the level that had been hoped for.