WHO warns that coronavirus pandemic is accelerating

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the coronavirus disease pandemic is now ‘accelerating’, with more than 300,000 cases confirmed.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said it is still possible to ‘change the trajectory’ of the virus, but the Director General of WHO urged countries once again to adopt rigorous testing and contact-tracing strategies.

It took 67 days from the first reported of Covid-19 to reach 100,000 cases, 11 days for the second 100,000, and just four days for the third 100,000.

Following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new measures, the WHO also said that asking people to stay at home and other physical-distancing measures were an important way of slowing down the spread of the virus, but described them as ‘defensive measures that will not help us to win’.

Instead, we need to ‘attack the virus with aggressive and targeted tactics’ he said, which should involve testing every suspected case, isolating and caring for every confirmed case, and chasing and quarantining every close contact.

Discussing the reported shortage in protective clothing and equipment, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that WHO has been working with its partners to rationalise and prioritise the use of protective equipment, and to address the global shortage of it.

He said: “Health workers can only do their jobs effectively when they can do their jobs safely. Even if we do everything else right, if we don't prioritise protecting health workers many people will die because the health worker who could have saved their life is sick. Measures put in place to slow the spread of the virus may have unintended consequences of exacerbating shortages of essential protective gear and the materials needed to make them."