29/3/2020 WHO labels coronavirus a pandemic | Financial Times

Coronavirus
WHO labels coronavirus a pandemic
Move raises pressure on governments to take more effective action

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said the word 'pandemic' was not to be used lightly © Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty

Clive Cookson in London MARCH 12 2020

The World Health Organization has labelled the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic as
the number of cases surged to some 118,000 in 114 countries, with 4,291 deaths.

The change of terminology from epidemic to “pandemic” followed detailed

consultations about the spread of Covid-19 with health experts inside and outside the
WHO, said Michael Ryan, executive director in charge of health emergencies, on
Wednesday. “We balanced the benefit of galvanising the world to fight the virus
against the danger that it would lead to countries giving up,” he added.

A pandemic means a disease is spreading rapidly in several different parts of the

world.

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, told a teleconference in

Geneva: “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 have called every day for countries to take urgent and
aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.”
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agg ess ve act o . We ave u g t e a a be oud a d c ea .

The impact of the announcement is expected to be largely psychological. “Describing

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

But independent experts expect it to have a significant effect. “The characterisation of

the situation as a pandemic may mean that we see countries feel incentivised to
implement further larger interventions, such as banning of public gatherings, sooner
than they were otherwise planning to,” said Michael Head, a global health researcher
at the University of Southampton.

“In the past two weeks, the number of cases of Covid-19 outside China has increased
13-fold and the number of affected countries has tripled,” said Dr Tedros. “There are
now more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have lost their lives.
Thousands more are fighting for their lives in hospitals.

“In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of Covid-19 cases, the
number of deaths and the number of affected countries climb even higher,” he
warned.

Dr Ryan noted the Italian health service was under severe pressure, with nearly 900
Covid-19 patients in intensive care. “Italy and Iran are suffering now but I guarantee
that other countries will be in that position soon,” he said.

Dr Ryan declined to say which countries were not doing enough to fight the
pandemic. “We don’t criticise member states in public. We try to work with them,
telling them how they can improve — and they tell us how we can improve,” he said.

But he listed several areas in which governments were falling short, including
maintaining excessively rigorous diagnostic criteria so that too few people were tested
for infection; failing to protect frontline health workers; prematurely giving up tracing
contacts of known Covid-19 cases; poor communication with the public; and lack of

co-ordination between national authorities and states, provinces and local

authorities.
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aut o t es.

Read more about the impact of coronavirus

• The latest figures as the outbreak spreads
• How countries around the world are battling coronavirus
• How dangerous is the coronavirus and how does it spread?

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