RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declared on Wednesday, March 11th, the situation of the new coronavirus as a global pandemic.
The organization had been reluctant to describe the spread of the Covid-19 as such for weeks, although the new disease has affected over 118 countries. The number of confirmed cases in Brazil rose to 69, with two new cases in Rio and 16 in São Paulo. The total number of suspected cases in Brazil is 876. There are already confirmed cases of internal transmission (i.e. cases not “imported” from abroad), but no fatal victims have been registered by Brazil’s health authorities.
In all, 121,000 people have contracted the coronavirus worldwide, and more than 4,300 deaths have been recorded – most of them in China and Italy, the two main epicenters of Covid-19 in the world.
“We are deeply concerned both by alarming levels of spread and severity and by worrying indications of lack of action. Therefore, we assess that the Covid-19 can be characterized as a pandemic,” the WHO Director-General told journalists.
Ghebreyesus pointed out that although the change of category represents a new stage in the spread of Sars-CoV-2, the word pandemic should be used with “great responsibility” not to generate widespread panic. There was pressure from different countries, including Brazil, for the organization to acknowledge the state of pandemic.
He said that “we must be more aggressive”, emphasizing that this “pandemic” can be “controlled”. Still according to the WHO’s Director General, this is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus strain.
“We had never seen a pandemic caused by a coronavirus. For the next few days and weeks, we expect an increase in cases, deaths and affected countries,” Ghebreyesus predicted.
At the same press conference, Mike Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO Emergency Health Programme, said recognizing the situation as a pandemic would not change WHO’s planning. Ryan also noted that Iran’s situation, one of the countries most affected by the Covid-19, was “very serious” and demanded greater vigilance from the Tehran government.
Countries in the spotlight
Iranian official statistics have reported 9,000 cases and 354 deaths, but the WHO itself, in addition to the United States, has alerted to underreporting in previous weeks. However, Ghebreyesus noted that Iran is doing everything in its power to overcome the new coronavirus.
Ryan further alerted that, although Italy and Iran are at the forefront of the spread of the new coronavirus and the “export” of the Covid-19 elsewhere, other nations would likely be affected in the same way in the “near future”.
Last Monday, Ghebreyesus had already alerted to the possibility of the organization to decree a state of pandemic. At the time, the head of the United Nations Health Organization warned that the world must be prepared to overcome the new disease.
“Now that the virus is present in many countries, the threat of a pandemic has become very real,” said the Director-General at a press conference. “The main point is that we are not at the mercy of the virus”.
By late January, the WHO had declared a global public health emergency because of the spread of the coronavirus, which emerged in the city of Wuhan, China in late December.