The World Health Organization said on Friday that COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency of international concern, its highest level of alert.

The WHO first declared the COVID-19 disease as a global health emergency on Jan 30, 2020. The designation helped mobilize resources to prevent the virus' spread around the globe.

The label was lifted following the advice of an emergency committee convened to discuss the issue on Thursday.

China reported its first domestic COVID-19 infection in Wuhan, Hubei province in late December 2019. On Jan 20, 2020, the National Health Commission classified the disease as a category B infectious disease but said that it would be treated as a top-level category A disease.

After over three years fighting the disease, China downgraded its management of it from category A to B on Jan 8 and declared a decisive victory against the epidemic on Feb 16.