We’re not quite at the level of a pandemic even if it is evident that the coronavirus outbreak is rapidly expanding across continents. The World Health Organization (WHO), however, says we should indeed prepare for certain dire possibilities.
“For the moment, we are not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this virus and we are not witnessing large scale severe disease or deaths. Does this virus have unlimited potential? Absolutely. Are we there yet? From our assessment, not yet.” Says WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The organization additionally says that isolating cases quickly is what the governments must do as soon as possible. “Even slowing down the virus by a month or six weeks has massive positive benefits on the system.” According to Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO’s Emergencies Program.
Canada’s Dr. Bruce Aylward says, “In the face of what has been a previously unknown disease, China has taken one of the most ancient strategies for infectious disease control and rolled out probably the most ambitious and I would say agile and aggressive disease-contagion efforts in history. We have all got to look at our systems because none of them work fast enough.”
Currently, over 77,000 people infected and nearly 2,600 fatalities marks China as having the most infections. However, those numbers are decreasing.
Furthermore, more than 1,200 cases have been confirmed in 30 other countries, with a death toll of 20, six in Italy.
