If you think the current Coronavirus infections are bad, wait until you hear the “best estimates” from WHO. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergency operations chief, told the global agency’s executive board on Monday – “Our current best estimates tell us that about 10% of the global population may have been infected by this virus,”

 

The estimate means based on the current world population of 7.8 billion people, about 780 million people may have already infected with Covid-19. That’s certainly more than the 35.2 million cases reported today. If it’s true that 1 in 10 people worldwide have had the virus, it also means the actual number on the ground is more than 20 times of the official statistics.

 

Flanked by his boss, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Dr. Michael Ryan was speaking to a special session of the WHO’s 34-member executive board when he said the latest figures vary from urban to rural – “This varies depending on the country. It varies from urban to rural. It varies between different groups,”

Ryan said Southeast Asia, along with Europe and the eastern Mediterranean was seeing an increase in Covid-19 cases and deaths. Interestingly, the situations in Africa and the Western Pacific were “rather more positive.” The WHO’s estimates have confirmed what experts have suspected for months – the number of confirmed cases greatly underestimates the true figure.

 

But how did the WHO derive the estimate number? A WHO spokeswoman, Dr. Margaret Harris, said it was based on an average of antibody studies conducted around the world. She said the estimated 90% of people remaining without infection means the virus has “opportunity” to spread further “if we don’t take action to stop it” such as by contact-tracing and tracking of cases by health officials.

 

The WHO also warned that the pandemic will “continue to evolve” and the world was “heading into a difficult period“. But it said the world had the tools to help suppress transmission of the Covid-19 and save lives. Dr. Ryan said – “The future depends on the choices we collectively make about how we use those tools, develop, scale up and distribute others,”

The special meeting saw punches being thrown between two nations – the U.S. and China. As expected, the U.S. condemned China for what it called a “failure” to provide accurate and timely information on the outbreak. Chinese official rubbished the allegation, saying that “China has always been transparent and responsible to fulfill our international obligations.

 

The 2-day meeting is the first by the executive board since the Trump administration set off a one-year countdown toward pulling the United States out of the WHO next July. President Donald Trump, who himself has just been infected by the virus, has repeatedly accused the WHO of being too trusting of China’s explanations of its handling of the outbreak in Wuhan late last year.

 

Under Trump administration, the U.S. has recorded more than 7.4 million cases of Covid-19 and nearly 210,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins. About two-thirds of U.S. states reported an increase in new Coronavirus cases in the past week, mostly in the West and Midwest. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered schools in several “hot spots” to close beginning on Tuesday.

In Europe, several nations hit milestones with Germany reporting on Monday its total confirmed cases exceed 300,000, while Britain recorded 500,000 cases, and Spain becomes the first European country to surpass 800,000 total Coronavirus cases. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was facing failure in his country’s testing data system – a missing of 16,000 Covid-19 test results.

 

Bars in Paris will be closed for 2 weeks starting Tuesday, while restaurants will begin using new sanitary protocols, which include registering the contact details of customers and closing at 10 pm. The new restrictions were due to a surge in cases of Covid-19, which also saw Paris upgraded to the maximum alert level. On Sunday, France reported 12,565 new cases of Coronavirus.

 

India registered more than 74,000 confirmed new cases as of Monday. The country has over 6.6 million confirmed cases, while fatalities crossed 100,000 on Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins. India’s prolonged lockdown has devastated livelihoods, causing acute food shortages and insecurity, which in turn leads to higher mortality and malnutrition – especially among children.

 

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October 6th, 2020 by financetwitter

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