The Head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, today (29 Apr) stressed that “from the beginning, WHO has acted quickly and decisively to respond and to warn the world” about the COVID-19 outbreak, and “said repeatedly that the world had a window of opportunity to prepare and to prevent widespread community transmission.”
Talking to reporters from Geneva, Dr Tedros said, “we sounded the alarm early, and we sounded it often.”
The WHO Director-General announced that he will reconvene the Emergency Committee tomorrow, as “it’s almost three months since we declared the highest emergency and that’s what was suggested by the Emergency Committee – to evaluate the evolution of the pandemic, and to advise on updated recommendations.”
The Executive Director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, Dr Michael Ryan, said, “over the coming few weeks, there will be a huge scale up, in terms of automated tests, manual tests, swabs and media, and all of the other material needed for testing, right across low middle-income countries and within about 140 priority countries. And in fact, I think all countries in sub-Saharan Africa are included as part of that priority list.”
Ryan said, “we intend to fill a significant proportion of that gap in the coming weeks and months, and be a reliable source of PPE, of testing capacity and equipment and supplies, as well as other medical supplies of ventilators, to countries and populations all over the world. We are doing and striving our best to identify the funding and the transport mechanisms and the way to guarantee those supplies.”
The Health Emergencies Programme Technical Lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, said, “there are some recent rare descriptions of children, in some European countries that have had this inflammatory syndrome, which is similar to the Kawasaki syndrome, but it seems to be very rare.”
Van Kerkhove said the global network of clinicians has been asked “to be on alert for this and to ensure that they capture information on children systematically so that we could better understand what is occurring in children and so that we could better improve our understanding and guide treatment.”
Ryan said, “I think there's a perception out there that Sweden has not put in place control measures and has just allowed the disease to spread. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sweden has put in place a very strong public health policy around physical distancing, around caring and protecting for people in long-term facilities. And many other things. What it has done differently is that it's very much relied on its relationship with its citizenry and the ability and willingness of citizens to implement physical distancing and to self-regulate, if you will, if you want to use that word.”
Ryan said, “I think if we are to reach a new normal, I think, I think in many ways Sweden represents a future model, if we wish to get back to a society in which we don't have lockdowns, then society may need to adapt for a medium, or potentially a longer period of time, in which our physical and social relationships with each other will have to be mother modulating by the presence of the virus. We will have to be aware of the virus is present and we will have to, as individuals and families and communities do everything possible on a day to day basis to reduce the transmission of that virus.”
According to the latest WHOI COVID-19 situation report, there are 2, 954,222 confirmed cases worldwide, and 202,597 deaths.
