GENEVA / ZURICH (Reuters) – The new worldwide coronavirus pandemic will worsen if countries fail to comply with strict health precautions, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Monday.
A community health officer helps sanitation workers don personal protective equipment (PPE) at the Fourah Bay College Coronavirus Treatment Center in Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2, 2020. REUTERS / Cooper Inveen / File Photo
“Let me be frank, many countries are heading in the wrong direction, the virus remains the number one public enemy,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a virtual meeting from the headquarters of the UN agency. in Geneva.
“If basic principles are not followed, the only way this pandemic will unfold will be worse and worse.”
Global infections total 13 million, according to a Reuters count, with more than half a million deaths.
Tedros, whose leadership has been criticized by United States President Donald Trump, said that of 230,000 new cases on Sunday, 80% were from 10 nations and 50% from just two countries.
The United States and Brazil have been the most affected.
WHO chief of emergencies Mike Ryan said some places in the Americas may need “limited or geographically focused blockages that suppress transmission in specific areas where transmission is frankly out of control.”
He urged countries not to turn schools into political football, saying that schools could safely reopen once the virus has been removed.
Tedros said the WHO had not yet received a formal notification of Trump’s announced withdrawal from the United States. The President of the United States says the WHO pleased China, where the disease COVID-19 was first detected, at the start of the crisis.
Trump, who over the weekend wore a protective mask in public for the first time, has been accused by political opponents of not taking the coronavirus seriously enough, something he denies.
An advanced two-member WHO team in China to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, first discovered in Wuhan City, is under quarantine, according to standard procedure, before starting work with Chinese scientists, Ryan said.
Reports by Stephanie Nebehay, Silke Koltrowitz and Michael Shields; Written by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Kevin Liffey
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