WHO declares COVID-19 a pandemic as cases mount
Print Edition
EXPRESSING increasing alarm about rising infections, the World Health Organization declared yesterday that the global coronavirus crisis is now a pandemic.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who heads the UN agency, said the WHO is “deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity” of the outbreak. He also expressed concern about “the alarming levels of inaction.”
“We have, therefore, made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic,” he said at a briefing in Geneva.
“All countries can still change the course of this pandemic. If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response,” Tedros said.
Meanwhile, Italy mulled imposing even tighter restrictions on daily life and announced billions in financial relief yesterday to cushion economic shocks from the coronavirus, its latest efforts to adjust to the fast-evolving health crisis that also silenced the usually bustling heart of the Catholic faith, St Peter’s Square.
Premier Giuseppe Conte said he will consider requests to toughen Italy’s already extraordinary anti-virus lockdown that was extended nationwide on Tuesday. Lombardy, Italy’s hardest-hit region, is pushing for a shutdown of nonessential businesses and public transportation cutbacks.
These additional measures would be on top of travel and social restrictions that imposed an eerie hush on cities and towns across the country from Tuesday. Police enforced rules that customers stay 1 meter apart and ensured that businesses closed by 6pm.
Normal life was increasingly being upended. With police barring access to St Peter’s Square, emptying it of tens of thousands of people who usually come on Wednesdays for the weekly papal address. Pope Francis instead livestreamed prayers from the privacy of his Vatican library.
Italy is the worst-affected country after China, with some 631 deaths and 10,149 confirmed cases since the contagion came to light in Lombardy on February 21.
More than 119,000 people have been infected worldwide and over 4,200 have died. For the global economy, the repercussions are profound, with concerns of wealth- and job-wrecking recessions.
Italy’s government announced it is earmarking 25 billion euros (US$28 billion) to soften economic blows, including delaying tax and mortgage payments.
In Spain, the number of cases surged past the 2,000-mark yesterday. Belgium announced its first virus-related death, of a 90-year-old woman.
“Right now, the epicenter ... is Europe,” said Robert Redfield, the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the United States, where the caseload passed 1,000, dozens of cases were being tied to a conference in Boston, and leaders in multiple states were announcing curbs on large events. Colleges emptied their classrooms as they moved to online instruction.
New York’s governor said National Guard troops would scrub public places and deliver food to a suburb where infections have spiked. In Washington state, where a Seattle-area nursing home was the center of an outbreak, officials said the virus had spread to at least 10 other long-term care facilities.
The other major outbreak site in Asia, South Korea, continued to report improving numbers, with 242 new cases. Still, a cluster of infections connected to a call center in one of the busiest areas of Seoul raised alarms.
So far, 93 people have tested positive among the call center’s employees and their families, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said yesterday in a briefing broadcast over YouTube. The number could grow as tests are being done on more than 550 co-workers who worked on other floors of the Korea Building in Seoul’s Guro district.
In neighboring Japan, preparations for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics this summer are going ahead “as scheduled,” organizers insisted yesterday, while acknowledging their “concern” about the virus.
Tokyo 2020 president Yoshiro Mori made the comments after a member of the organizers’ executive board sounded the alarm on the virus, warning delaying the Games for two years might be the best option under the circumstances.
But Mori dismissed that option, as did Japanese Olympic Minister Seiko Hashimoto, who told a parliament committee that postponing or canceling the Games was “inconceivable.”
The virus has so far infected 568 people in Japan and been linked with 12 deaths.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 娌狪CP璇侊細娌狪CP澶05050403鍙-1
- |
- 浜掕仈缃戞柊闂讳俊鎭湇鍔¤鍙瘉锛31120180004
- |
- 缃戠粶瑙嗗惉璁稿彲璇侊細0909346
- |
- 骞挎挱鐢佃鑺傜洰鍒朵綔璁稿彲璇侊細娌瓧绗354鍙
- |
- 澧炲肩數淇′笟鍔＄粡钀ヨ鍙瘉锛氭勃B2-20120012
Copyright 漏 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
