Calling the coronavirus pandemic “Public Enemy No. 1,” World Health Organization officials warned Wednesday against squandering a narrowing window of opportunity for countries and their citizens limit the final death toll of the outbreak by taking agressive actions to slow the outbreak’s spread.
“It’s a dangerous virus. We had been saying to the world the window of opportunity is narrowing and the time to act was actually more than a month ago, two months ago,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing.
Tedros noted, “The pandemic continues to take a massive toll.”
“We have overcome many pandemics and crises before. We will overcome this one, too. The question is how large a price we will pay,” he said.
“We have lost more than 16,000 lives, we will lose more. How many more will be determined by the decisions we make,” Tedros said.
In fact, the global death toll from COVID-19 is now nearly 20,000, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Global infections from the virus have risen to over 441,000, according to JHU.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s emergencies program, told reporters that, “Unfortunately the world was not ready for a pandemic.”
