WHO: Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating
The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is now in a "new and harmful phase", the World Overall health Organisation said on Friday, with the disease accelerating at the same time as people tire of lockdowns.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged nations and residents to remain extremely vigilant, due to the number of conditions reported to the UN health agency hit a new peak.
"The pandemic is accelerating. A lot more than 150,000 brand-new cases of Covid-19 had been reported to the WHO yesterday - the virtually all in a single day up to now," Tedros told a digital press conference.
He said nearly half of those circumstances were reported from the Americas, with good sized quantities also appearing reported from South Asia and the Middle East.
"The world is in a fresh and dangerous phase. Various people are understandably sick and tired of being at residence. Countries are understandably eager to start their societies and economies," he said.
"But the virus is still spreading fast, it's even now deadly and most of the people are still susceptible," he stated, with the most vulnerable set to suffer the worst.
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 456,000 persons and infected more than 8.5 million because the outbreak started out in China late this past year, regarding to a tally from official sources published by AFP.
Italy's top health company on Friday urged caution after the other day seeing "warning signs" of new coronavirus transmitting, especially more than outbreaks of cases in Rome.
WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said countries would have to be on alert for second waves of infection - and second peaks within the initial wave if it's not properly suppressed.
"You may have a second peak inside your first wave, and you may have a second wave: it isn't either or perhaps," the Irish epidemiologist said.
While increased amounts of confirmed cases could be down to improved testing, he said unexpected soaring hospitalisation and death statistics were an improved indicator of a resurgence.
"Exiting lockdowns must be done carefully," he said.
"If you don't know where the virus is, the chances are that the virus will surprise you."
Ryan said countries needed to be more agile and react quickly and precisely to new clusters, and he praised the strength of investigations going on found in Beijing, which is battling a new outbreak.
"When you see a cluster, you have to jump on the cluster... if we want to steer clear of the blunt instrument of lockdown," he explained.
Beijing's fresh coronavirus outbreak emerged at a wholesale marketplace, with the total amount of infections since last week now at 183.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical business lead on Covid-19, said virus sequences from the brand new outbreak were already available for study.
"As we understand it, the virus is carefully linked to the European strain," she said.
Ryan explained that strains were on the move all over the world, saying "lots of the infections that circulated in NY were of European origin", even though "Japan has reimported instances from Europe."
He said it had been "reassuring" that the Beijing outbreak appeared as if human-to-human transmission, squashing the hypothesis that the the virus had jumped the species barrier once again from animals. - AFP
