The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the worst is yet to come from the coronavirus pandemic. This is because of lack of global solidarity and the susceptibility of most people to the virus, which still has a lot of room to move.
This was disclosed by the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, during a virtual briefing in Geneva on Monday, June 29, 2020.
He stated that some countries are experiencing a resurgence of coronavirus cases and about 50% of the deaths are coming from the Americas. The daily deaths from Iran has reached a record high, whereas the likes of Australia, China and South Korea have new cases.
The WHO boss, on Monday, said that contact tracing of people with the coronavirus infections is the most important step in fighting the coronavirus pandemic and countries that are yet to do so have no excuse.
READ MORE: Global fight against COVID-19 suffers setback, as Trump suspends WHO funding
Tedros pointed out that the virus can be suppressed and contained using the tools at hand and countries shouldn’t wait for a vaccine to deal with it. Any country saying that contact tracing is difficult is said to be giving “lame excuses” as countries like South Korea, Japan and Germany have done so successfully.
He said countries like South Korea had managed to contain the disease by contact tracing of those with the infection and that was possible under extreme conditions.
He also said that although many countries have made some progress, the pandemic is rapidly increasing globally.
READ MORE: Multichoice to integrate Netflix, Amazon contents into decoder
Meanwhile, a biopharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences Inc. said it is going to charge the US government and other developed countries $390 per vial for its coronavirus fighting drug remdesivic, or about $2,340 for a typical 5-day course of treatment.
Tedros disclosed that WHO will be sending a team of researchers to China next week in order to investigate the origin of the virus. This appears to be in response to the numerous criticisms that have been gotten from the United States government led by Donald Trump, over its handling of the outbreak especially with the original cases from China.