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Most countries are still in the early stages of dealing with the new coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, while the global case count exceeded 2.5 million, adding that most people on the planet are still susceptible to Covid-19.
“Make no mistake: we have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time and can be easily ignited,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a virtual press conference.
Tedros asked tech companies to help reach people with phone text messages on Covid-19, starting with the Asia-Pacific.
“Most epidemics in Europe appear to be stable or are declining, although the numbers are low, we see worrying upward trends in Africa, Central and South America and Central Europe,” he said.
Tedros issued a word of warning saying that there are still many gaps in the world’s defenses against the virus and that no country has everything in place.
“We declared the international emergency at the right time when there were only 82 cases outside of China and there were no deaths and the rest of the world had enough time to respond,” added Tedros.
A WHO expert said that in Africa the organization is seeing that several countries are still seeing imported cases and that they have not reached a point where the disease has really taken off and reached exponential growth.
WHO Executive Director Michael Ryan said there was a nearly 250% increase in Covid-19 cases in Sudan last week and a nearly 300% increase in Somalia. “We are at the beginning of Covid-19 in Africa,” he said.
The WHO observations come at a time when the number of coronavirus cases in the world crossed 2.5 million and India has more than 20,000 cases.
Ryan also said that parts of Europe and North America have a series of very intense outbreaks in long-term care facilities and that each country has to see how to minimize them.
A WHO expert said that several countries are seeing a resurgence again and that is because a large proportion of the population is susceptible.
