There is a long path ahead for the human race to make the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) cease to exist, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday Addressing inaugural session of the World Health Assembly (WHA), he urged nations to deal with the contagious disease “with respect,” considering the heavy casualties, more than 4.5 million infections worldwide and death of more than 300,000 people.
He noted that the outbreak has added obstacles to efforts for fighting other diseases such malaria and polio, in addition to creating huge problems at the economic and social levels worldwide, such unemployment, state of uncertainty and drastic slump of the global economy for the first time since the great depression. The WHO chief criticized great nations for embroiling in geopolitical differences and disputes at the expense of efforts to fight the pandemic.
He also called on nations to ease constraints warranted with the contagion outbreak quickly but cautioned that slack measures must not be at expense of keeping the germ at bay. Ghebreyesus defended the WHO actions against the pandemic saying the organization had sounded the alarm bell “early,” informing states about the breakout and issuing recommendations to the health sectors and declaring a global state of emergency on January 30 before people started to die on a wide scale outside China. The WHO chief declared that he would examine the contagion status soon for taking lessons from the experience and presenting recommendations to states.
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