Coronavirus ‘most serious health emergency’ WHO has faced

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said that Covid-19 is easily the most serious global health emergency he has ever declared.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he would reconvene the WHO emergency committee this week to review his assessment of the pandemic.

There have been five other global health emergencies: Ebola (two outbreaks), Zika, polio, and swine flu.

More than 16 million cases of Covid-19 have been reported since January.

“When he declared a public health emergency of international concern on January 30 … there were fewer than 100 cases outside of China and there were no deaths,” said Dr. Tedros.

“Covid-19 has changed our world. It has brought people, communities and nations together, and has separated them.”

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“This is the sixth time that a global health emergency has been declared under international health regulations, but it is easily the most serious. [More than] 16 million cases have been reported to WHO and more than 640,000 deaths, and the pandemic continues to accelerate.

“In the past six weeks, the total number of cases has roughly doubled,” he added.

Although the world had made a great effort in the fight against the virus, there was “a long and hard road ahead”, he added.

In other developments:

• The national security adviser to the President of the United States, Donald Trump, Robert O’Brien, tested positive for coronavirus. He is the highest-ranking official in the administration known to have tested positive.

• Spain insists that recent outbreaks of new cases have been isolated and that the country is safe for tourists to visit, after the UK introduced new measures requiring visitors to Spain to be quarantined for 14 days.

• Vietnam closed the coastal city of Da Nang to tourists after 15 new cases of locally transmitted coronavirus were recorded, the first in the country since April

• The American biotechnology company Moderna has started the final phase of clinical trials for a possible Covid-19 vaccine. Some 30,000 volunteers participate in the third and final phase of testing before the vaccine can be sent to a regulatory authority for evaluation and possible approval.
• Belgium is tightening the restrictions to try to avoid another blockade due to a worrying increase in the number of its cases. Starting Wednesday, Belgians will be able to see up to five people outside their families. Currently, a Belgian individual can meet 15 people in a “social bubble”

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At the Monday briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, the WHO also said that travel restrictions could not be the long-term answer, and that countries had to do more to stop the spread by adopting proven strategies such as social distancing and use of masks.

“It is going to be almost impossible for individual countries to keep their borders closed for the foreseeable future. Economies have to open up, people have to work, trade has to resume,” said WHO emergency program director Mike Ryan.

However, WHO officials acknowledged that more blockades may be needed in countries experiencing renewed outbreaks, but suggested that they should be as short as possible and confined to as small a geographic area as possible (i.e. local blockages).

“The more we understand about the virus, the more surgical we can be to control it,” Ryan said.