The new coronavirus pandemic is clearly “accelerating,” the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Monday, but said it was still possible to “change the trajectory” of the outbreak.
“The pandemic is accelerating,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists in a virtual news briefing, saying, “It took 67 days from the first reported case to reach the first 100,000 cases, 11 days for the second 100,000 cases and just four days for the third 100,000 cases.”
But he said: “We are not helpless bystanders. We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.”
He also stated that social distancing and staying at home are defensive measures against the pandemic.
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate global cease-fire to protect war-ravaged communities from the coronavirus pandemic.
Guterres urged warring parties to “end the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world. It starts by stopping the fighting everywhere now.”
He said this was crucial to help create corridors for life-saving aid and open channels for diplomacy.
The U.N. chief said the most vulnerable – children, people with disabilities, the marginalized and the displaced – are “at the highest risk of suffering devastating losses from COVID-19,” pointing to collapsed health systems and often-targeted medics.
There are more than 350,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide, and the pandemic has caused more than 15,000 deaths.
Discussion about this post