With the international public health emergency ending, WHO/Europe launches its transition plan for COVID-19

Although COVID-19 is no longer defined as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), it continues to take a significant toll on health globally. With the pandemic now in its fourth year, it is clear the virus is likely to stay with us for many years to come – if not forever. Responding to the current situation, and looking to the future, WHO/Europe is launching its transition plan for COVID-19. 

“While the international public health emergency may have ended, the pandemic certainly has not,” explained Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, Regional Director for WHO/Europe. “And as our Region seeks to emerge from this crisis, it is also faced with new health threats, at a time when our health systems face increasing workforce and other challenges.” 

“Using the momentum built since 2020, now is the time to invest and sustain the gains made during the pandemic response and apply the lessons of this pandemic and other health emergencies,” continued Dr Kluge. “This is the way to increase the resilience of our health systems against future shocks.” 

Making the transition to the next stage 

Across Europe and central Asia, more than 270 million people have been infected by COVID-19 and over 2.2 million people have died from the disease since January 2020. Although hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 have declined significantly, thanks to increased population immunity, the continued widespread circulation of the virus means that thousands of vulnerable people are still dying each week. Despite progress made, inequities across the WHO European Region persist, and vast knowledge gaps still need to be filled. 

There is still also the very real risk of new variants emerging that could be more transmissible and/or more severe, which makes the need for continued resources into surveillance all the more critical.  

Meanwhile, efforts to control infections have relaxed, even though the longer-term health consequences of infection and re-infection at the individual and population levels remain poorly understood.   

It is estimated that at least 17 million people experienced Post COVID-19 Condition (long COVID) in the first 2 years of the pandemic and that number potentially doubled to over 34 million in 2022.  

As the Region enters this new phase, countries will also have to learn to live with the virus alongside other respiratory diseases, and this means integrating COVID-19 control into broader prevention and control programmes.  

As such, WHO/Europe will implement 13 strategic shifts in its approach to managing COVID-19 across the 5 core subsystems of WHO’s work in emergencies. 

To help achieve this, WHO/Europe’s new transition plan provides a framework to leverage innovations and lessons from COVID-19 and other recent emergencies into the development of the next regional 5-year action plan to strengthen health emergency preparedness, response, and resilience in the WHO European Region, 2024–2029 – what WHO/Europe is calling Preparedness 2.0.   

“This marks a move towards a new paradigm that aims to give the Region the required capabilities and networks to rapidly detect, verify and notify new and evolving health threats, and to effectively respond to emergencies caused by any hazard, grounded in the principles of solidarity, transparency, and accountability,” said Dr Gerald Rockenschaub, WHO Regional Emergency Director for Europe.   

The transition plan sets out how COVID-19 activities should be managed and integrated within 5 core components of WHO's proposed global health architecture for Health Emergency Preparedness, Response and Resilience (HEPR): 

①collaborative surveillance, including sustaining and building laboratory capacity and using digital tools to collect and analyse COVID-19 data;

②community protection across the emergency cycle to enable and empower communities to take informed decisions to uptake measures that protect their health in emergencies;

③clinical care, ranging from training frontline health workers and strengthening the foundations for safe, scalable, and high-quality care to ensuring sustained investment in health services and emergency care systems;

④countermeasures, such as learning from and sustaining the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out as part of wider immunization efforts; and

⑤coordination, from hazard-specific COVID-19 and influenza pandemic response plans to integrated respiratory virus pandemic planning. 

To make this happen, Member States need to strategically and sustainably invest in pandemic preparedness, while maintaining vigilance through dual-track readiness that can respond to new health threats and ensuring the continuation and resilience of essential health services.   

“The end of the global COVID-19 emergency is not an occasion to pack up and move on,” warned Dr Catherine Smallwood, Senior Emergency Officer, WHO/Europe. “It is a call to action to use this time wisely, to not waste the progress or the lessons of the past 3 years, but to sustain and learn from them in order to help create a better prepared and resilient European Region in the future.”

随着国际公共卫生紧急情况的结束，

世卫组织/欧洲启动了COVID-19的过渡计划。

尽管COVID-19不再被定义为国际关注的公共卫生事件（PHEIC），但它继续在全球范围内对健康造成重大损失。随着该大流行病现已进入第四个年头，很明显，该病毒可能会在今后许多年里与我们同在--如果不是永远的话。为应对当前形势并展望未来，世卫组织/欧洲正在启动其COVID-19过渡计划。

"世卫组织/欧洲区域主任Hans Henri P. Kluge博士解释说："虽然国际公共卫生紧急情况可能已经结束，但这种大流行病肯定没有结束。"在我们地区寻求摆脱这场危机的同时，也面临着新的健康威胁，此时我们的卫生系统面临着越来越多的劳动力和其他挑战。

"Kluge博士继续说："利用自2020年以来建立的势头，现在是投资和维持大流行病应对期间所取得的成果的时候了，并应用这次大流行病和其他卫生紧急情况的经验教训。"这是提高我们卫生系统抵御未来冲击的能力的方法。"

实现向下一阶段的过渡

在整个欧洲和中亚地区，自2020年1月以来，已有超过2.7亿人感染了COVID-19，超过220万人死于该疾病。 尽管由于人口免疫力的提高，COVID-19的住院人数和死亡人数已大幅下降，但病毒的持续广泛传播意味着每周仍有成千上万的脆弱人群死亡。尽管取得了进展，但世卫组织欧洲地区的不平等现象依然存在，巨大的知识差距仍需填补。

此外，还存在着出现新变种的真实风险，这些变种可能更具传播性和/或更严重，这使得继续为监测提供资源的需要更加重要。

同时，控制感染的努力已经放松，尽管在个人和群体层面上，对感染和再感染的长期健康后果仍然知之甚少。

据估计，在这一流行病的头两年，至少有1700万人经历了COVID-19后的状况（长COVID），而这一数字在2022年可能会翻倍，超过3400万人。 

随着该地区进入这一新阶段，各国还必须学会与该病毒和其他呼吸道疾病一起生活，这意味着将COVID-19控制纳入更广泛的预防和控制计划。

因此，世卫组织/欧洲将在其管理COVID-19的方法上实施13项战略转变，涉及世卫组织紧急情况下工作的5个核心子系统。

为帮助实现这一目标，世卫组织/欧洲的新过渡计划提供了一个框架，以利用从COVID-19和其他近期紧急情况中获得的创新和经验教训，制定下一个区域五年行动计划，以加强世卫组织欧洲区域2024-2029年的卫生应急准备、响应和复原力，即世卫组织/欧洲称之为准备2.0。

世卫组织欧洲区域突发事件主任Gerald Rockenschaub博士说：“这标志着朝着一种新范式迈进，旨在为该区域提供所需的能力和网络，以快速发现、核实和通报新的和不断变化的健康威胁，并在团结、透明和问责原则的基础上有效应对任何危害造成的突发事件。过渡计划规定了应如何管理COVID-19活动并将其纳入世卫组织拟议的突发卫生事件防范、应对和复原力全球卫生架构的5个核心组成部分：

①协作监测，包括维持和建设实验室能力，以及使用数字工具收集和分析COVID-19数据;

②在整个应急周期中提供社区保护，使社区能够并增强其能力，以做出明智的决定，采取措施在紧急情况下保护其健康;

③临床护理，从培训一线卫生工作者和加强安全、可扩展和高质量护理的基础，到确保对卫生服务和应急护理系统的持续投资;

④应对措施，例如学习和维持COVID-19疫苗接种的推广，作为更广泛的免疫工作的一部分;和协调，从针对特定危害的COVID-19和流感大流行应对计划到综合呼吸道病毒大流行规划。

⑤为实现这一目标，会员国需要战略性和可持续地投资于大流行防范，同时通过应对新的卫生威胁的双轨准备保持警惕，并确保基本卫生服务的持续性和复原力。

“全球COVID-19突发事件的结束不是收拾行装继续前进的时机，”世卫组织/欧洲高级突发事件官员Catherine Smallwood博士警告说。“这是一个行动呼吁，明智地利用这段时间，不要浪费过去3年的进展或教训，而是要保持并从中学习，以帮助在未来建立一个准备更充分和更有弹性的欧洲地区。