Coronavirus pandemic worst global health emergency WHO has ever faced: Director general
The new coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 16 million people worldwide is the worst global health emergency the World Health Organization (WHO) has faced, its director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says.
Only with strict adherence to health measures, from wearing masks to avoiding crowds, would the world manage to beat it, Tedros added at a virtual news briefing in Geneva on Monday.
"Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they are not, cases go up," he said, praising Canada, China, Germany and South Korea for controlling outbreaks.
Resurgences of coronavirus in various regions, including where nations thought they had controlled the disease, are alarming the world, with deaths nearing 650,000.
Tedros emphasized the priority remained saving lives.
"We have to suppress transmission but at the same time we have to identify the vulnerable groups and save lives, keeping the death rates if possible to zero, if not to a minimum," he said, praising Japan and Australia in that respect.
Meanwhile, WHO emergencies program head Mike Ryan said it was impossible for countries to keep borders shut for the foreseeable future.
"...It is going to be almost impossible for individual countries to keep their borders shut for the foreseeable future. Economies have to open up, people have to work, trade has to resume," he said.
"What is clear is pressure on the virus pushes the numbers down. Release that pressure and cases creep back up."
Ryan said Spain's current situation was nowhere near as bad as it had been at the pandemic's peak there, and he expected clusters to be brought under control, though it would take days or weeks to discern the disease's future pattern.
"The more we understand the disease, the more we have a microscope on the virus, the more precise we can be in surgically removing it from our communities," he added.
Travel bans cannot be indefinite; countries must fight virus: WHO
The UN's health agency, however, said on Monday that bans on international travel cannot stay in place indefinitely, while stressing that countries are going to have to do more to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus within their borders.
A surge of infections has prompted countries to re-impose some travel restrictions in recent days, with Britain throwing the reopening of Europe's tourism industry into disarray by ordering quarantine on travelers returning from Spain.
(Source: Reuters)
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