WHO declares global pandemic

The World Health Organization today declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic – a unique phenomenon for a coronavirus, its head declared.

Of 118,000 cases reported worldwide, more than 4,000 people have died, the Geneva-based United Nations agency said. The virus has found a foothold on every continent except for Antarctica.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “We have never before seen a pandemic sparked by a coronavirus. And we have never before seen a pandemic that can be controlled at the same time.

“Describing the situation as a pandemic does not change WHO’s assessment of the threat posed by this coronavirus. It doesn’t change what WHO is doing, and it doesn’t change what countries should do.”

If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response, those with a handful of novel coronavirus cases can prevent those cases becoming clusters, and those clusters becoming community transmission, Ghebreyesus said.

“Several countries have demonstrated that this virus can be suppressed and controlled,” Ghebreyesus said.

A pandemic is defined as the “worldwide spread” of a new disease. An outbreak is the occurrence of disease cases in excess of what’s normally expected and an epidemic is more than a normal number cases of an illness, specific health-related behavior or other health-related events in a community or region, according to WHO.

In January, the WHO declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.

A decade ago, the last worldwide pandemic, the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, killed hundreds of thousands globally.

Of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ghebreyesus said: “WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction.

“We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough: All countries can still change the course of this pandemic.”