Worldwide Covid-19 infections have passed 20 million, just a few days before the fifth month since the World Health Organisation declared a global pandemic. Recalling this grim milestone, the WHO insisted that while all energy and resources must be directed at defeating this virus, despair should not feature, saying if the virus could be suppressed effectively, “we can safely open up societies”.
Global cases reached one million at the start of April. By 22 May, there were 5 million cases. That figure had doubled to 10 million cases by the end of June, and, seven weeks later, it had doubled again to 20 million infections.
The WHO’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this morning that “there are green shoots of hope and … it’s never too late to turn the outbreak around.”
Tedros gave examples of countries that had successfully clamped down on the spread of Covid-19, citing New Zealand and Rwanda, and praised nations that had suffered major national outbreaks and were now responding quickly to local spikes.
But the WHO’s emergencies director, Michael Ryan, warned that a vaccine was “only part of the answer”, pointing to polio and measles as diseases with vaccines that have not been fully eradicated. “You’ve got to be able to deliver that vaccine to a population that want and demand to have that vaccine,” he said.
Read more via The Guardian
