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(CNN) --
US President Joe Biden has said he believes the COVID-19 pandemic is "over."
He did so in an appearance on CBS's "60 Minutes," but acknowledged that the United States still has a "problem" with the virus that has killed more than 1 million Americans.
“The pandemic is over.
We still have a problem with covid.
We still work a lot on that.
But the pandemic is over,” Biden said.
The US government still designates covid-19 as a public health emergency and the World Health Organization says it remains a public health emergency of international concern.
Still, the president's comments follow other hopeful comments from world health leaders.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, told a news conference last week that the end of the covid-19 pandemic was "in sight" and that the world has never been in a better position. to end the covid-19 pandemic.
"Last week, the number of weekly deaths reported from Covid-19 was the lowest since March 2020," Ghebreyesus said.
“We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic.
We are not there yet, but the end is in sight.”
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Last month, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) adjusted its guidance on covid-19 to urge the nation to move away from measures such as quarantines. and physical distancing and instead focus on reducing serious illness caused by covid-19.
However, the agency says that some people, including the elderly, those who are immunocompromised, those with certain disabilities or underlying health conditions, are at higher risk of severe illness and may need to take extra precautions.
About 65,000 new Covid-19 cases were reported each day for the past two weeks, data from Johns Hopkins University shows, with reported cases declining in nearly every state.
In the US, around 400 people die every day from covid-19.
Although official case counts are far from representative of actual levels of transmission, forecasts released by the CDC say new hospitalizations and deaths will remain stable over the next month.
For people hospitalized for covid-19, the risk of dying fell to the lowest level during the omicron wave, according to a study published last week by the CDC.
The researchers suggest that there were several factors that contributed to the improved mortality risk: high levels of immunity, both from vaccination and previous infection, advances in treatments, and properties of the omicron subvariants that made them less likely to cause disease.
CNN's Naomi Thomas and Deidre McPhillips contributed to this report.