In the first press conference of 2024 held on January 10, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that COVID risk is still high. "Although Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency, the virus is still circulating, changing, and killing," the UN health agency s chief said in the media briefing on global health issues. WHO had declared an end to COVID as an international public health emergency in May 2023, more than three years on from when the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.