World Health Organization Says World Should Prepare For Coronavirus Pandemic
While the coronavirus outbreak is rapidly expanding across continents, we’re not quite at the level of a pandemic. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) says we should indeed prepare for its potential.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says, “For the moment, we are not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this virus and we are not witnessing large scale severe disease or deaths. Does this virus have unlimited potential? Absolutely. Are we there yet? From our assessment, not yet.”
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Additionally, the organization says the governments need to act fast in isolating cases quickly. Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO’s Emergencies Program adds, “Even slowing down the virus by a month or six weeks has massive positive benefits on the system.”
Canada’s Dr. Bruce Aylward says, “In the face of what has been a previously unknown disease, China has taken one of the most ancient strategies for infectious disease control and rolled out probably the most ambitious and I would say agile and aggressive disease-contagion efforts in history. We have all got to look at our systems, because none of them work fast enough.”
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Currently, China has the most infections, with over 77,000 people infected and nearly 2,600 fatalities. However, those numbers are decreasing.
Furthermore, more than 1,200 cases have been confirmed in 30 other countries, with a death toll of 20, six in Italy.