The World Health Organization (WHO) says the number of coronavirus cases will reach one million in a few days during a news briefing in Switzerland on Wednesday.
“Over the past five weeks, we have witnessed a near exponential growth in the number of new cases, reaching almost every country, territory and area,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters during a news briefing at the organization’s Geneva headquarters.
He expressed his deep concern about the “rapid escalation and global spread” of the coronavirus outbreak. He pointed out that the number of coronavirus case will reach one million with 50,000 deaths in the coming days.
Tedros also noted that scientists do not know everything yet about the virus, establishing that this is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus “and whose behavior is not really known.” Scientists were able to trace the coronavirus back to bat DNA. It is believed that the virus transmitted from there to a pangolin before moving to humans.
It was in 2009 when WHO declared its last pandemic, the H1N1 swine flu outbreak took place. The 2002-2003 outbreak of SARS, which is also a coronavirus, was curbed effectively to avoid that classification.
“COVID-19 is a real threat. It is a real threat to everyone on the planet,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on the outbreak.
On Monday, WHO said that government lockdowns are not enough to tame the COVID-19 outbreak. But they are necessary, according to the health institution, despite the damages brought to the economy and society. Without lockdowns, the coronavirus would lead to more fatalities.
“This is serious. This is a deadly virus, people will get through it, countries will get through it,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program.
Leaders from different countries have empower their public health systems “if we’re going to get out of an interminable cycle of economically punishing lockdowns and shutdowns,” Ryan said.
“We must get back to be able to control this virus, live with this virus, develop the vaccines that we need to finally eradicate this virus.”
Lockdown effectiveness
Moreover, Ryan explained that it is too early for anyone to gauge the effectiveness of shutdown or lockdown measures on viral disease transmission.
Countries are advised to focus on adjusting policies and strategies against the pandemic. They can assess how effective they were in mitigating the infection. “I’d love to say there’s an easy way to do this, I’d love to say that there’s way out of this without that kind of hard work, but there isn’t.” Ryan said.
The coronavirus has infected more than 885,000 people around the world and led to at least 44,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
In the US, there are 186,101 cases of coronavirus, an increase of 22,562 cases from its previous tally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Meanwhile, the number of deaths had increased by 743 to 3,603.
Meanwhile, in Italy, the civil protection authority reported that the country’s count had risen by 727 deaths to 13,155. The number of confirmed infections, including deaths, recovered and current cases, rose by 4,782, making the total 110,574.
