Six months on from the novel coronavirus outbreak, the WHO on Monday said it was sending a team to China to work toward finding the source — as it warned the pandemic was far from over.
The WHO also warned that in an atmosphere of global division and solicitation of the COVID-19 crisis, it feared the worst was yet to come.
The UN health agency lamented the “very tragic” milestones of 500,000 deaths and 10 million confirmed infections being reached.
Photo: AP
Yesterday also marked six months since the WHO was first informed of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
The WHO is sending a team to China next week in connection with the search for the origin of the virus that sparked the global pandemic.
The organization has been pressing China since early May to invite in its experts to help investigate the animal origins of the virus.
“We can fight the virus better when we know everything about the virus, including how it started,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual news conference. “We will be sending a team next week to China to prepare for that, and we hope that that will lead into understanding how the virus started.”
He did not specify the makeup of the team, or what their mission would specifically consist of.
Scientists believe the virus jumped from animals to humans, possibly from a market in Wuhan selling exotic animals for meat.
“Six months ago, none of us could have imagined how our world — and our lives — would be thrown into turmoil by this new virus,” Tedros said.
“We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives, but the hard reality is this is not even close to being over,” he said. “Globally the pandemic is actually speeding up. We’re all in this together, and we’re all in this for the long haul. We have already lost so much — but we cannot lose hope.”
Tedros also said that the pandemic had brought out the best and worst humanity, citing acts of kindness and solidarity, but also misinformation and the politicization of the virus.
Unless international unity replaces fractious division, “the worst is yet to come. I’m sorry to say that,” Tedros said.
“With this kind of environment and condition, we fear the worst,” he added.
While the world races to find safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics against COVID-19, Tedros said that countries such as South Korea had shown that the virus could be successfully suppressed and controlled without them.
He said that governments needed to be “serious” about measures such as contact tracing, and citizens had to take responsibility for personal steps such as maintaining hand hygiene.
Reflecting on the global death toll and infection numbers, Tedros said: “Still, this could have been prevented through the tools we have at hand.”
“The critical question that all countries will face in the coming months is how to live with this virus. That is the new normal,” he added.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS