Story at a glance
- The World Health Organization said the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating.
- WHO officials said there needs to be targeted tactics, such as testing every suspected COVID-19 case, isolating and caring for every confirmed case and tracing and quarantining every close contact.
- More than 300,000 cases have been reported from almost every country in the world.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, as more than 300,000 cases have been confirmed worldwide and physical distancing measures are appearing not to be enough to stop the spread.
“Asking people to stay at home and other physical distancing measures are an important way to slow down the spread of the virus and buy time, but they are defensive measures,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news conference Monday.
“To win, we need to attack the coronavirus with aggressive and targeted tactics — testing every suspected COVID-19 case, isolating and caring for every confirmed case, and tracing and quarantining every close contact,” he said.
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WHO officials noted it took 67 days from the first reported case to reach the first 100,000 cases, 11 days for second 100,000 and just four days for the third 100,000.
Tedros went on to say the trajectory of the pandemic can still change, insisting it’s not too late to stop the spread of the virus, which first emerged in China in December.
“We are not prisoners to statistics,” he said. “We are not hopeless bystanders.”
According to Johns Hopkins University data, more than 370,000 cases have been confirmed worldwide with more than 16,000 deaths. In the U.S., more than 41,000 cases have been confirmed with nearly 500 deaths.
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