Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the official end of the coronavirus emergency it announced approximately three years ago.

WHO'S Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “With great hope, I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency.”

While the declaration has little 'practical effect,' it has significance since it claimed "at least 20 million lives" and affected everyone's daily routine across the globe for years.

As of May 3, there has been 765,222,932 official confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 6,921,614 deaths, according to the WHO which considers these numbers a 'vast undercount' of the true figures.

The WHO issued an updated management plan for the virus that is meant to help countries transition from the usual emergency response to focus on long-term prevention and control.

- Local perspective- 

Professor of Constitutional Law Laith Nasraween said that defense laws in Jordan are supposed to end, since the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the end of the global emergency associated with the coronavirus.

He told Roya Friday that since the Cabinet's decision to implement defense laws in Jordan was based on the WHO's declaration of the pandemic as a global health emergency, defense laws should be suspended since the emergency has been officially ended.

Nasraween explained that Defense Order No. 21 is the most important one, which relates to litigation procedures and the use of modern technology to register cases and present pleadings.

He said the House of Representatives should expedite the approval of the draft law amending the Civil Courts Procedure Law for the year 2023, which was recently approved by the Council of Ministers, aiming to facilitate litigation procedures and complete transactions using modern technology as stated by Defense Order No. 21, as a last step before the suspension of the Defense Law.

Nasraween added that the suspension of the defense law should be done in the same mechanism in which it was announced, indicating that it needs a cabinet decision and a royal decree.