COVID-19 Pandemic Is Heading Towards The Worst, Warns WHO
The number of coronavirus infections around the world hit 13 million recently, climbing by a million in just five days. “There would be no return to the “old normal” in the foreseeable future, especially if preventive measures were neglected. The virus remains public enemy number one,” World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva. The United States and Brazil are the two countries that have been worst hit by COVID-19.
At the same briefing, WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan said that some places in the Americas may need “limited or geographically focused lockdowns that suppress transmission in specific areas where transmission is frankly out of control”.
Tedros warned that countries that were easing their way out of lockdowns were now witnessing a resurgence of the virus because they were not following proven methods to reduce risk. If governments do not roll out a comprehensive strategy to suppress transmission of the virus, and if populations do not follow basic public health principles, “there is only one way this pandemic is going to go,” he said. “It’s going to get worse and worse and worse.”
As per the latest update by the Johns Hopkins University, a total number of 12,970,605 cases and 570,220 deaths have been reported globally. The WHO advance team has gone to China to investigate the origins of the new coronavirus. The team’s members are in quarantine, as per standard procedure before they begin work with Chinese scientists, Ryan said.