UN lifts state of emergency for Zika

by Sarah Ferris - 11/18/16 2:47 PM ET

The United Nation’s health agency on Friday declared that the Zika virus is no longer a global health emergency while calling for “intense action” to address the existing threat.

The World Health Organization said while the virus that has spread to 67 countries remains a “significant enduring public health challenge” it no longer meets its definition of a health emergency requiring international attention.

WHO officials instead called for a “robust longer-term technical mechanism” to manage the global response.

Officials decided to drop the Zika virus from its health emergencies list after a teleconference with members.

The health agency had recently reported a decline in new cases of Zika infection in some countries, but warned “vigilance needs to remain high.”

Until now, the WHO’s attention has been largely focused on stopping the spread of the virus. Officials said Friday that the focus would now be researching the still largely unknown disease.

“Many aspects of this disease and associated consequences still remain to be understood, but this can best be done through sustained research,” the group said in a statement after the emergency committee’s meeting.

More than 36,000 people in the U.S., including its territories, have tested positive for the virus. About 3,500 of those cases are in pregnant women.

The Zika virus is known to cause a birth defect called microcephaly, which causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads.

But researchers still largely don’t know how often the birth defect occurs or about any long-term damage to Zika-infected babies who are born without the defect.

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