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The new coronavirus will have infected 10% of the world’s population, some 780 million people, well above the 35 million officially confirmed cases since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization admitted on Monday. .
The estimate was advanced by the director of health emergencies of the WHO, Michael Ryan, who also revealed that the organization has already chosen members of the international team that will investigate the origins of the pandemic, although it has not set a date for the start of the work.
The origin of the virus is one of the issues that brought the WHO most criticism in the response to the pandemic, specifically to the United States, which pointed the finger at China and the organization’s excessive proximity to Beijing.
In a speech at the opening of a special session of the Executive Board on the response to SARS-CoV-2, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus highlighted the need to accelerate the reform of the institution in terms of emergency management , without defending the work done in the fight against the pandemic.
Tedros Ghebreyesus appreciated the reform he implemented over the past three years at WHO, which had been accused of underestimating the scope of the Ebola crisis in West Africa between late 2013 and 2016. However, that work did not stop him from calling for more reforms . Geneva-based organization to make it even more effective.
“We are not on the wrong track, but we must move faster. The pandemic is an awakening for all of us,” he said, emphasizing: “We must all look in the mirror and ask ourselves what we can do better.”
This extraordinary two-day meeting of the WHO Executive Board, which brings together representatives from 34 countries elected for a three-year term and is responsible for preparing and implementing the decisions of the organization’s members, is only the fifth in its history. .
It was convened by the WHO in response to a resolution passed by European Union member states in May, calling for an “independent assessment” of the response to the pandemic.
“The world needs a robust peer review system. We encourage countries to come up with new ideas. We must be open to change and we must implement changes now,” concluded the WHO Director-General.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than one million thirty thousand deaths and more than 34.9 million cases of contagion worldwide, according to a report prepared by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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