WHO: 'The worst is yet to come' and the coronavirus pandemic is 'speeding up' because some countries aren't taking it seriously enough
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Hilary Brueck
Jun 30, 2020, 03:29 IST
A park ranger wears a face mask while patrolling the Bright Angel trail in Grand Canyon National Park, which has partially reopened on weekends amid the coronavirus pandemic, May 25, 2020, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona.Mario Tama/Getty Images
The World Health Organization said on Monday that "the worst is yet to come" in the fight against the novel coronavirus and that "the pandemic is actually speeding up."
There's already a playbook for what works well to stop the virus, but not everyone is using it, WHO said.
The multipronged strategy includes widespread testing, tracing, and continued vigilance with social distancing when new clusters of cases emerge.
"Every politician needs to look in the mirror and say, 'Am I doing enough to stop this virus?'" the executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Program said.
"The worst is yet to come," WHO's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on a call with reporters from Geneva. "I'm sorry to say that. But with this kind of environment and condition, we fear the worst."
WHO officials stressed repeatedly on the call that not all countries were combatting the virus with the same levels of success or vigilance. With more than half of the 10 million coronavirus cases to date and almost half of the 500,000 deaths in the Americas, there's a lot more that both governments and people in overburdened countries like the US and Brazil could be doing to stop this virus.
"We all want this to be over, we all want to get on with our lives, but the hard reality is this is not even close to being over," Tedros said. "Although many countries have made some progress, globally, the pandemic is actually speeding up."
Without naming any names, Tedros chided countries for not doing more to stop the spread of the virus as economies reopen.
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The virus' spread "could have been prevented through the tools that we have at hand," Tedros said. "Time after time and country after country, what we have seen is this virus can be suppressed if the governments are serious about the things they have to do — their share — and if the community can do its share."
Some countries can 'pounce on disease' better than others
WHO applauded previously hard-hit countries, like South Korea and China, and others that dealt with recent recurrences of the virus, including Germany, Singapore, and Japan, adding that coronavirus vigilance requires a concerted effort from both politicians and citizens.
Many of the most successful coronavirus-fighting countries have adopted a multilayered public-health approach allowing them "to pounce on disease" quickly and effectively where it reemerges, said Mike Ryan, the executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Program.
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"What you have to do is push the disease down to the lowest possible level," he said, stressing that in addition to more nationwide testing and tracing and good public-health surveillance systems, the most successful strategies relied on diligent citizens who stay home when coronavirus transmission is widespread.
"Communities have made a huge sacrifice for that to happen," Ryan said. "They're staying at home. They're staying away from their families. They've contributed tremendously to suppressing infection."
In a poll conducted earlier this month by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center poll, a majority of Republican and Republican-leaning independents said they thought the worst of the coronavirus outbreak and its related problems "is behind us," while less than a quarter of Democrats and Democratic-leaning participants said the same.
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"We cannot continue to allow the fight against this virus to become and be sustained as an ideologic fight," Ryan said. "We cannot beat this virus with ideologies. We simply cannot."
"Every individual needs to look in the mirror and say, 'Am I doing enough?'" Ryan said. "And every politician needs to look in the mirror and say, 'Am I doing enough to stop this virus?'"
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