- Title: Coronavirus crisis may get "worse and worse and worse", warns WHO
- Date: 13th July 2020
- Summary: GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (FILE - MAY 18, 2020) (REUTERS) VARIOUS EXTERIORS OF WHO
- Embargoed: 27th July 2020 16:12
- Keywords: Geneva Tedros United Nations WHO coronavirus pandemic transmission
- Location: GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
- City: GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
- Country: Switzerland
- Topics: Health/Medicine
- Reuters ID: LVA002CMN8BPJ
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The new coronavirus pandemic raging around the globe will worsen if countries fail to adhere to strict healthcare precautions, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday (July 13).
"Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from the U.N. agency's headquarters in Geneva.
Global infections stand at 13 million, according to a Reuters tally, with more than half a million deaths.
Tedros, whose leadership has been heavily criticised by U.S. President Donald Trump, said that of 230,000 new cases on Sunday (July 12), 80% were from 10 nations, and 50% from just two countries. The United States and Brazil are the countries worst hit.
Tedros said the WHO had still not received formal notification of the U.S. pullout announced by Trump. The U.S. president says the WHO pandered to China, where the COVID-19 disease was first detected, at the start of the crisis. Trump, who wore a protective face mask for the first time in public at the weekend, has himself been accused by political opponents of not taking the coronavirus seriously enough, something he denies.
A WHO advance team has gone to China to investigate the origins of the new coronavirus, first discovered in the city of Wuhan. The team's members are in quarantine, as per standard procedure, before they begin work with Chinese scientists, WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan said.
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