Make No Mistake, COVID-19 Will Be With Us For A Long Time - WHO Boss

The Director-General of the World Health Organisation, WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on Wednesday disclosed that the Coronavirus will not be going away anytime soon, even as he pointed out that his major focus was on ending the pandemic and saving lives.

Noting that there were “worrying upward trends” in early epidemics in parts of Africa and Central and South America, the WHO boss expressed hopes that the Donald Trump administration would reconsider its suspension of funding.

“Make no mistake, we have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time,” he said while noting that epidemics in Western Europe appear to be stabilising or declining.

“Most countries are still in the early stages of their epidemics and some that were affected early in the pandemic are starting to see a resurgence in cases,” Reuters reports Tedros as telling Geneva journalists in a virtual briefing.

AllNews recalls that the US President, Donald Trump last week criticised the WHO’s handling of the pandemic and announced he was suspending funding to the agency.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday said the United States strongly believes that China’s ruling Communist Party failed to report the outbreak of the new coronavirus in a timely manner to the WHO.

“I hope the freezing of the funding will be reconsidered and the US will once again support WHO’s work and continue to save lives,” Tedros said, adding that, “I hope the US believes that this an important investment, not just to help others but for the US to stay safe also.”

The WHO DG urged countries to continue investing in preparedness, saying that only 76 percent had surveillance systems to detect cases.

“There are still many gaps in the world’s defences and no single country has everything in place,” he said.

Amid criticism that it should have acted earlier, Tedros defended the WHO’s decision to declare an international emergency only on January 30 – its highest level of alert.

“Looking back I think we declared the emergency at the right time and when the world had enough time to respond,” the DG said, adding that on that date there were only 82 Coronavirus cases outside of China and no deaths at the time.