The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is attending a press conference organized by the Association of United Nations Correspondents in Geneva (ACANU) amid the COVID-19 outbreak, caused by new coronavirus, on 3 July 2020 at WHO headquarters in Geneva.
FABRICE COFFRINI | AFP | Getty Images
LONDON – The head of the World Health Organization said on Friday that an alarming upward trend in Covid cases has caused global infections to now reach their highest level since the start of the pandemic.
“Worldwide, cases and deaths continue to rise at a worrying rate,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing focused on Papua New Guinea and the Western Pacific region.
“Globally, the number of new cases a week has almost doubled in the last two months. It is approaching the highest infection rate we have seen so far during the pandemic,” he continued.
“Some countries that had previously avoided widespread transmission now see a sharp rise in infections,” said Tedros, who cited Papua New Guinea as an example.
Tedros said the UN health agency would continue to assess the course of the coronavirus crisis and “adjust the advice accordingly.”
According to international health regulations, Tedros said the WHO emergency committee met on Thursday and expected to receive his advice on Monday.
“Globally, our message to all people in all countries remains the same. We all have a role to play in ending the pandemic,” he said.
To date, more than 139 million cases of Covid have been reported worldwide, with 2.9 million deaths, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.
The WHO declared the coronavirus a global pandemic on March 11 last year.
“Shocking imbalance”
Tedros said earlier that one of WHO’s top priorities is to increase the ambition of COVAX, an initiative working for equitable global access to Covid vaccines, to help all countries end the pandemic.
The COVAX scheme was expected to deliver nearly 100 million vaccines to people by the end of March, but so far it has only distributed about 38 million doses.
The WHO has said it hopes the initiative can recover in the coming months, but has condemned what it describes as a “shocking imbalance” in vaccine distribution among high- and low-income countries.
The health agency has also criticized countries that have sought their own vaccine offers outside the COVAX initiative for political or commercial reasons.
Earlier this year, WHO’s Tedros had warned that the world was on the brink of a “catastrophic moral failure” over vaccine inequality.
He said a “first approach to vaccines” would put the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people at risk, adding that the approach was “self-defeating,” as it would foster hoarding and likely prolong the health crisis.