Countries should stop wasting time and fight coronavirus: WHO

Governments should stop wasting your time needed to fight the coronavirus after squandering a chance to stop the Covid-19 pandemic, the globe Health Organization’s head said.

“We wasted the primary window of opportunity," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “The time to act was quite a month ago or two months ago."

The WHO chief gave a rare, blunt admonishment Wednesday on the world’s progress against the disease, which has killed almost 20,000 people and is present in nearly every country. The agency generally avoids public criticism of its member states, Mike Ryan, the pinnacle of its emergencies program, has said.

The world encompasses a second chance, as 150 countries have fewer than 100 reported cases and still have time to arrange, Tedros said. Those who have ordered lockdowns have won themselves time to implement aggressive measures to end the disease. How long lockdowns must last depends on what actions countries take during them to make sure the virus is destroyed, Tedros said.

While such strict regimes impose harsh social and economic costs, “the last item any country needs is to reopen schools and businesses only to shut them again thanks to a resurgence in cases," Tedros said.

He gave a listing of six actions every country should take:

• Expand, train and deploy health-care workers
• Implement systems to seek out suspected cases
• Ramp up production of tests and increase the availability
• Identify facilities that may be transformed into coronavirus health centres
• Develop plans to quarantine cases
• Refocus government on suppressing the virus.

“The world isn't ready for an outbreak," Ryan said. For instance, breaks within the supply chain could compel supplies of medical gloves, which are made up of rubber that’s sourced from only some countries.

Health-care workers face shortages of protective gear across the globe, said Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO. People that aren’t sick don’t need masks, she has said, and doctors shouldn’t be empty them thanks to the way a rustic uses them.

“This isn't acceptable," she said. “Protecting our health-care workers must be the highest priority." "If there’s any lesson from this pandemic, it’s that we'd like stronger public health systems," on a national and global level, Ryan said.