WHO urges unity against virus
Print Edition
THE head of the World Health Organization has called the new coronavirus an “enemy against humanity,” as the number of people infected in the pandemic soared past 220,000.
Worldwide fatalities topped 9,000 and more deaths have now been recorded in Europe, the new virus epicenter, than in Asia since the epidemic broke out in China in December.
“This coronavirus is presenting us with an unprecedented threat,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists in a virtual news conference on Wednesday.
He stressed the need for countries everywhere to “come together as one against a common enemy: an enemy against humanity.”
“Viruses know no borders, and they don’t care about your ethnicity or the color of your skin or how much money you have in the bank,” Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said in response to some US politicians calling the COVID-19 a “Chinese virus.”
“It’s really important that we be careful in the language we use, lest it lead to profiling of individuals associated with the virus,” Ryan insisted.
He gave an example of the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, saying that the pandemic “originated in North America, and we didn’t call it the North American flu.”
Meanwhile, the official called for solidarity and joint efforts to combat the disease. “This is a time to move forward together to fight this virus together, there is no blame in this,” Ryan noted.
The recent relabeling of COVID-19 with xenophobic undertones by US politicians to stigmatize China has drawn widespread criticism.
Ryan’s views were echoed by Microsoft Corp Bill Gates, who wrote on Wednesday in an Ask Me Anything session on social news platform Reddit: “We should not call this the Chinese virus.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren refuted the racist remarks on Twitter, saying that “coronavirus does not discriminate.”
“Bigotry against people of Asian descent is unacceptable, un-American & harmful to our COVID-19 response efforts,” the Massachusetts lawmaker wrote.
John Yang, president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a non-profit legal aid organization, told NBC Asian America that the US administration’s words could have negative repercussions.
The use of such racist terms has “led to a noticeable incline in hate incidents that we are seeing.”
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