W.H.O. Cautions: Coronavirus Pandemic Accelerating, America Is Now Epicenter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The novel coronavirus pandemic is far from subsiding. Driven by the spread of the pathogen in America and the continuing outbreaks in countries that have already suffered the first wave of the disease, such as China and Germany, the greatest health crisis of the century remains at the center of World Health Organization (W.H.O.) concerns.

“The pandemic is accelerating,” warned Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organization’s Director-General. On Thursday, June 18th, 150,000 infections were reported in the world, the highest figure in any day to date. Almost half were in America.

So far, some 8.5 million people have been infected worldwide and over 454,000 have died, according to the latest balance of Johns Hopkins University.

“The world is entering a dangerous new stage,” cautioned Ghebreyesus. “The virus is still spreading rapidly, it still causes deaths and the majority of the population is not immunized,” added the organization’s director.

The W.H.O. alerted on Friday to an increase in Covid-19 cases and deaths in America, the region that has now become the epicenter of the pandemic. The organization fears that instead of the continent’s epidemiological curves flattening out, there has been an increase in the last few hours, with particular attention to Brazil, the most affected Latin American country by Covid-19 and one where its President, the ultraconservative Jair Bolsonaro, continues to downplay or deny the consequences of the pandemic.

Data from Johns Hopkins University show that there are over four million people infected on the continent and a total of 213,044 deaths. W.H.O. statistics show that in Brazil there were 34,918 Covid-19 infections and 1,282 deaths between Wednesday and Thursday, bringing the total to 955,377 confirmed cases and 46,510 deaths, the highest figures in Latin America. “We will continue to see these figures for some time,” said Alexandre Naime, head of Infectology at the State University of São Paulo (Unesp).

The United States is the other country most affected by the pandemic, and is now immersed in an outbreak of protests for police violence against the African-American population. The W.H.O. recorded 27,921 new positive cases and 722 deaths in the USA over the past two days. The United States has cumulative totals of 2,149,166 confirmed infections and 117,472 deaths. States such as California maintain high infection rates and on Wednesday recorded a new daily record, with 4,000 new cases.

Amid a political clash between states and the federal government over economic openness, California governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday ordered the population to wear masks, both when leaving home and in closed public spaces, reports The New York Times. This decision is at odds with President Donald Trump’s refusal to wear a mask, despite the experts’ advice.

On Wednesday, Chile recorded the highest surge in cases since the authorities alerted to the first infections. As a result of the delay in the data updating process, the authorities added 31,412 new infections to their statistics, bringing the total to 225,103 cases and 3,615 deaths. The country has enforced harsh sanitary measures in an effort to contain the spread of the virus.

On Friday, the national prosecutor, Jorge Abbott, announced the tightening of penalties for those failing to comply with the guidelines. On Tuesday, the Chilean Senate raised the prison sentence for those breaching health standards from 61 days to three years, in addition to fines that can reach 12 million Chilean pesos, approximately US$500,000. “Let’s be ruthless,” Abbott said.

The W.H.O. is also concerned with the situation in Mexico, where President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has stated on several occasions that his country has “tamed” the infection curve. The organization’s statistics show that between last Tuesday and Wednesday there was a “worrying escalation”. On Thursday, 5,662 new infections were recorded in Mexico, bringing the total to 165,455 confirmed cases and 19,747 deaths.

Many areas of the country still have a red flag, which is the reference established by health authorities to warn that the potential for infection remains high. Due to an ambiguous speech, in which it was reiterated that no severe sanctions would be taken against those who failed to comply with the restriction measures, the population has returned to public activities.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) – the continent’s W.H.O. arm – also voiced concern over the case of Nicaragua, as its president, Daniel Ortega, initially dismissed the impact of the pandemic and ordered his followers to take to the streets of Managua under the slogan “Love in Covid Times”.

Local doctors criticized the authorities’ strategy and alerted to a considerable increase in deaths and infections. These complaints led the local Ministry of Health to dismiss over 15 doctors from public hospitals, so on Thursday, over 90 authors, headed by Nobel Prize-winner Mario Vargas Llosa, sent a letter to Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, demanding the reinstatement of the medical staff.

“Your country holds the highest record of nurses’ deaths in Central America. Despite this high risk, healthcare workers continue to provide services, regardless of the inadequate conditions. The fact that rather than being thanked, they receive unfounded letters of dismissal compels us to raise our voices in solidarity with them and the people of Nicaragua,” reads the letter, which is signed by Salman Rushdie, Ángeles Mastretta, Almudena Grandes, John Carlin, Héctor Abad Faciolince, Guadalupe Nettel, and British actress Julie Christie, among other celebrities.

Elsewhere in the world, Germany is the country recording the largest outbreak of the disease in recent days, with the infection of some 700 workers from a slaughterhouse and packaging plant of the Tönnies company in North Rhine-Westphalia. The government has also quarantined a further 700 people in a building in Göttingen (central Germany), where dozens of infections have been reported.

China, on the other hand, considers that it has controlled the outbreak that left Beijing on alert, with a total of 183 people infected after 25 new cases were reported. The country is now focused on locating the source of the outbreak, with the first indications pointing to a strain of European origin.

Worrying signs also come from countries that until now have been able to tackle the epidemic in a more agreeable way, such as Portugal. The government concedes to “challenges in breaking the virus’ transmission chains” after recording 375 cases in a single day, reports Javier Martín del Barrio.

Source: El País