Coronavirus Outbreak | WHO declares it as a global health emergency
The World Health Organisation has declared the novel coronavirus outbreak as a global public health emergency. The declaration was made as the virus continues to spread outside China.
Following the WHO declaration of the coronavirus as an emergency, the US has warned its citizens to not travel to China. The Director-General of the WHO Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the declaration is not a vote of no confidence in China, but the WHO continues to have confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak. Rather, he added that they are trying to protect the other countries with fewer resources.
“The speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome and shared it with WHO and the world are very impressive,” Tedros said to the media.
Till now, around 9000 cases of coronavirus detected in which 99 per cent was confirmed cases. Other than that, nearly 98 people have been diagnosed with the virus in other countries also. Since the strain of the coronavirus is new, and the advanced knowledge on its transmission and other details remains unknown.
Eight out of nine cases outside China has been a result of human-to-human transmission.
According to Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC director and current president of Resolve to Save Lives, a global public health initiative, one of the major gaps they’ve seen in the coronavirus pattern is getting detailed epidemiology, the pattern of disease to understand where the highest risks are.
The WHO has used the ’emergency’ destination five times including 2009 H1N1 pandemic; the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa; and the Zika virus epidemic in 2015-16.
Dr Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton in England, said that the declaration may make it easier to access. It can mobilize further funds for resource-poor countries, and promote the need for further global cooperation.
Source: NBC, BBC, New York Times.