WHO: COVID-19 Update

Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO) at the WHO’s regular press briefing in Geneva on 8 April-Photo Courtesy: WHO

It Is incredible to reflect on how dramatically the world has changed in such a short period of time,” said the head of the UN health agency WHO Dr Tedros, on the eve of the one hundredth day since the WHO was notified of the first cases of what will become known as COVID-19 in China.

“We convened the Emergency Committee on the 22nd of January and again a week later after the first cases of human to human transmission were reported outside China and declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, our highest level of alarm,” reflected Dr Tedros, Director-General of the World Health Organization, at the WHO’s regular press briefing in Geneva on Wednesday (08 April).

“We need to behave. That’s how we can defeat this virus,” Tedros said. “If we care about our people, if we care about our citizens, please work across party lines, across ideology, across beliefs, across any differences for that matter.”

He also called on the US and China to “come together and fight this dangerous enemy.”

“They should come together to fight it. And the rest of G-20 should come together to fight it and the rest of the world, it should come together to fight it. This virus is dangerous. We said it many times. It has the elements of a flu very contagious, and it has the elements of SARS, fatal,” said Tedros.

He also told reporters, “I don’t care who says what about me. I would prefer to focus on saving lives. No time to waste.”

In order to manage resources needed to ware off the pandemic, the Director-General of the UN world health body asked the world to “quarantine politicizing” and called for “a genuine, genuine solidarity.”

Responding to reports of pets contracting the coronavirus, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical lead of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said “we don’t believe that they’re playing a role in transmission, but we think that they may be able to be infected from an infected person.”

Two dogs in Hong Kong, a cat in Belgium, and a tiger at the Bronx Zoo were reportedly tested positive on the coronavirus SARS-Cov-2, which causes the COVID-19 disease in humans.

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove said “here are several groups that are conducting investigations” to understand how pets are infected.

“It seems like they are infected from their owners who are infected,” she said-WHO