The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the coronavirus outbreak, which has spread to at least 114 countries around the world, a pandemic .
“We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued a clarion call to governments around the world to urgently scale up their response to the novel coronavirus if they are to stand a chance of stemming its spread.
“Today’s declaration of a pandemic is a call to action – for everyone, everywhere,” the secretary general said in a statement on Wednesday evening soon after the world Health Organization (WHO) announced that the global emergency can now be described as a pandemic.
“We can still change the course of this pandemic — but that means addressing inaction,” he said. “I call on every government to step up and scale up their efforts–now.”
Latest data indicates more than 118,000 cases of infection in 114 countries, and 4,291 deaths–a 13-fold increase outside China in the past two weeks, and a threefold rise in the number of affected countries.
“The best science tells us, if countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response, we can go a long way to mitigating transmission,” the UN chief said.
His appeal echoed an earlier one by WHO Director-General Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, which officially labelled the outbreak a pandemic on Wednesday and blamed its spread and severity on “alarming levels of inaction”.
The declaration of a pandemic, Guterres said, was “also a call for responsibility and solidarity — as nations united and as people united.” “As we fight the virus, we cannot let fear go viral.”
“As we mourn all those who have lost their lives and the many families who are suffering, we must show solidarity with the most vulnerable — the elderly, the sick, those without reliable healthcare, and those on the edge of poverty.”
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council is scaling back its own schedule for March as a precaution against the pandemic, having already pushed back major gatherings outside of the Security Council.
Moreover, Italy has further tightened the quarantine it imposed across the country earlier this week – with all but essential services and shops to close for two weeks – after leaders from the European Union promised to do “whatever it takes” to tackle the coronavirus, which first emerged in China at the end of last year.
Meanwhile, the virus continued to spread in the United States and appeared in new countries including Bolivia, Honduras and Turkey, while Indonesia, Bulgaria and Sweden recorded their first deaths.
More than 66,000 people have recovered from the illness around the world, according to John Hopkins University, which is tracking the virus.
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