Corona virus : WHO asked every country to support and get educated

The risk assessment of the COVID-19, also known as novel coronavirus, has been raised to very high but containment was still possible has been said by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday. 

The director-general of WHO said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “The continued increase in the number of cases, and the number of affected countries over the last few days, are clearly of concern. Our epidemiologists have been monitoring these developments continuously, and we have now increased our assessment of the risk of spread and the risk of the impact of COVID-19 to very high at a global level. We do not see evidence as yet that the virus is spreading freely in communities. As long as that’s the case, we still have a chance of containing this virus, if robust action is taken to detect cases early, isolate and care for patients and trace contacts. The key to containing this virus is to break the chains of transmission.” 

The virus has been first reported in China, and there are a total of 78,959 cases of COVID-19 to WHO, included 2,791 deaths. A piece of good news is that in 24 hours, the country has reported only 329 cases- that is the lowest in more than a month. But the major concern is the rising number of cases outside China. 

“Outside China (there) are now 4,351 cases in 49 countries, and 67 deaths. Since yesterday, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Netherlands and Nigeria have all reported their first cases. All these cases have links to Italy. 24 cases have been exported from Italy to 14 countries, and 97 cases have been exported from Iran to 11 countries.” revealed by the WHO director-general.  

The virus has been infected over 85,000 people globally, with the death toll at 2,924 as of Saturday. A report by WHO-China Joint Mission provided 22 recommendations for China, other affected and unaffected countries, the international community, and the general public. The report is regarding the call for all the countries to educate their populations, to expand the surveillance to find, isolate and provide care for every case. And asked everyone to take initiative, because health ministry alone cannot work hard to deal with the problem. An apex health agency claims that the work is also progressing on the vaccines and therapeutics. There are many vaccines that are there to provide care, and many more are in the queue of experiments. 

“But we don’t need to wait for vaccines and therapeutics. There are things every individual can do to protect themselves and others today.”- Tedros

India is already prepared to prevent the entry of the virus in the county. According to the government, there 482,927 passengers who have been screened from 4,787 flights so far. Screening at 21 airports, 12 major seaports, 65 minor seaports and land crossings particularly bordering Nepal is underway. 

Passengers are also being monitored daily under the community surveillance through the Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) network. A total of 23,531 passengers are currently under community surveillance. The Union health ministry has advised Indians to refrain from the non-essential travel to South Korea, Iran, and Italy. India had reported three cases of coronavirus, all in Kerala, who were treated and discharged earlier this month. 

Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness along with the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans.