No country should make ‘fatal’ mistake of ignoring COVID-19: WHO

All countries should do more to prevent the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus and none should make the “fatal” mistake of assuming that it won’t be affected, UN health agency chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said.

Issuing an appeal after a new crop of countries confirmed that they had identified cases of infection for the first time, Tedros said that it was the responsibility of all governments to ensure that they acted swiftly.

“Whether we get it wrong or right is in our hands… every country must be ready for its first case, its first cluster, the first evidence of community transmission and for dealing with sustained community transmission…These are four scenarios, and it must be preparing for all of those scenarios at the same time. No country should assume it won’t get cases; that could be a fatal mistake, quite literally. This virus does not respect borders.”

Citing the latest COVID-19 data, the WHO Director-General said that China had confirmed 78,630 cases, including 2,747 deaths.

Outside China, there were 3,474 cases in 44 countries and 54 deaths, Tedros continued, highlighting with concern that for the past two days, the number of new cases in the rest of the world had exceeded the number of cases in China.

The seven countries to report cases for the first time in the past 24 hours are Brazil, Georgia, Greece, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan and Romania, Tedros noted.

“If you act aggressively now, you can contain this virus,” he said, adding that “in 90 percent of cases it’s a fever and in 70 percent it’s a cough. You can prevent people getting sick. You can save lives. So, my advice to these countries is to move swiftly.”.

While the spread of the virus in Iran, Italy, and the Republic of Korea had indicated “what this virus is capable of”, it can be contained, the WHO chief insisted.

Citing several countries that had not reported further cases for more than two weeks – Belgium, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam – the WHO chief then cautioned that Finland and Sweden had reported new cases after a break of two weeks without infections.

Original source: UN News
Published on 27 February 2020