The current outbreak of coronavirus disease, officially named COVID-19, does not yet constitute a global pandemic given the limited spread and China's efforts, which have shown that the disease can be treated, Michael Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Health Emergencies Program, said on Friday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th February, 2020) The current outbreak of coronavirus disease, officially named COVID-19, does not yet constitute a global pandemic given the limited spread and China's efforts, which have shown that the disease can be treated, Michael Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Health Emergencies Program, said on Friday.
"If we say there's a pandemic of coronavirus, we're essentially accepting that every human on the planet will be exposed to that virus. The data does not support that as yet, and China has clearly shown that that's not necessarily the natural outcome of this event. If we take action, if we move quickly, if we do the things we need to do, that does not need to be the history of this event," Ryan said at the WHO's daily press briefing.
The leading health official stated that the very definition of the term pandemic requires the likelihood that every single person on the planet could be exposed to COVID-19, which does not account for the still-limited spread of the disease.
"A pandemic is a unique situation [in] which we believe that all citizens on the planet will likely be exposed to a virus within a defined period of time ... If this was influenza, we would probably have called this a pandemic by now. But what we've seen with this virus is that with containment measures, with robust public health response, the course of this epidemic, or these multiple epidemics, can be significantly altered," Ryan stated.
COVID-19 originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December, and there have been over 83,750 confirmed cases so far, resulting in the deaths of over 2,860 people. However, over a third of people who contracted the disease have since been cured, including over 3,780 individuals in the last 24 hours.
