WHO says coronavirus outbreak now pandemic
The World Health Organization described the coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic for the first time yesterday as Britain and Italy announced multi-billion-dollar war chests to fight the disease.
The United States also said it was considering new steps to battle the virus that emerged in China in December and has spread around the world, halting industry, grounding flights, closing schools and forcing events to be postponed, reports Reuters.
"We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.
"We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a pandemic," he said, using the formal name of the coronavirus.
There are now more than 119,711 infections in 114 countries and 4,351 people have died of the virus, with the numbers expected to climb, Tedros said.
Use of the word pandemic does not change the WHO's response, said Dr Mike Ryan, the head of the Geneva-based agency's emergencies programme.
WHO officials have signalled for weeks that they may use the word "pandemic" but said it does not carry legal significance. The WHO classified the outbreak as a "public health emergency of international concern" on January 30, triggering an increase in global response coordination.
"The use of this term [pandemic] however highlights the importance of countries throughout the world working cooperatively and openly with one another and coming together as a united front in our efforts to bring this situation under control," said Nathalie MacDermott, an expert at King's College London.
Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Britain's Edinburgh University, added: "It is now clear that COVID-19 is going to be with us for a considerable length of time and the actions that we take must be actions that we can live with for a prolonged period."
WAR CHESTS
Before the WHO's comments, Italy and Britain announced they were setting aside large sums to fight the flu-like disease.
Britain launched a 30-billion-pound ($38.54 billion) economic stimulus plan as new finance minister Rishi Sunak said the economy faced a "significant impact" from the spread of the virus, even if it was likely to be temporary.
"Up to a fifth of the working-age population could need to be off work at any one time. And business supply chains are being disrupted around the globe," Sunak said in an annual budget speech to parliament.
Meanwhile, UK Health minister and Conservative MP Nadine Dorries was diagnosed with coronavirus yesterday.
Last week, Italy's cabinet said it would need $8.46 billion to fight the virus, but since then the emergency has escalated and the nation, already close to recession, is under lockdown, with the death toll now 827.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Wednesday earmarked $28.3 billion to ease the economic impact. He said that already tough restrictions on movement might be tightened further after the northern region of Lombardy, centred on Italy's financial capital Milan, asked for all shops to shut and public transport to close.
And the United States saw the first signs of an emergency footing with the New York city government forming a containment zone around a suburb at the centre of an outbreak.
US President Donald Trump has promised "major" economic stimulus measures, the biggest item on his wish list being a cut in payroll taxes.
National Guard troops were being called in to help deliver food and enforce the zone around New Rochelle, with officials insisting the measures were designed only to facilitate self-quarantine, not to isolate the area. The number of infections there almost doubled on Tuesday to top 1,000.
The WHO's Ryan said the situation in Iran was "very serious" and the agency would like to see more surveillance and more care for the sick. Iran has reported 237 deaths from the virus.
Kianush Jahanpur, a spokesperson at Iran's health ministry, said, "We have identified 958 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection in the last 24 hours, increasing the total number of cases to 9,000 across Iran."
South Korea yesterday reported a jump in new coronavirus cases, reversing 11 days of slowing infections, as authorities tested hundreds of staff at a Seoul call centre where the disease broke out this week.
Another 242 new cases were reported, compared with 35 a day earlier, bringing the total to 7,755 in Asia's worst outbreak outside mainland China, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said. The official death toll rose by four to 63.
China, still the worst-affected country with more than 80,000 cases and over 3,000 deaths, offered hope to the rest of the world by again announcing negligible new daily infections and only a relatively small number of deaths.
Some businesses in China's central Hubei province -- where the virus was first detected in December -- were told they could resume operations, reducing fears of a prolonged disruption of supply chains.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said up to 70 percent of the population was likely to be infected as the virus spreads around the world in the absence of a cure.
As of Tuesday's close, $8.1 trillion in value had been erased from global stock markets in the recent rout.
But not all the news was bad. Some key industries in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicentre of the epidemic and a hub of car manufacturing, were told they could resume work on Wednesday, a day after President Xi Jinping visited the city for the first time since the outbreak began.
INDIA SUSPENDS MOST VISAS
India last night announced suspension of most categories of existing visas, including tourist visas, from tomorrow until April 15 to prevent further spread of the coronavirus.
However, the restriction will not be applicable for the visas issued for diplomats, officials of UN and other international organisations, and project visas.
The revised travel advisory will be effective from 12:00 GMT tomorrow, the Health Ministry said in a statement.
The decision to issue the new advisory was taken at a high-level meeting headed by Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, as the number of positive cases of coronavirus virus across India went up to 67.
Comments