COVID-19, One Of The Scariest Challenges Ever Seen –WHO

The Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says though every one faces one or two challenges but throughout countries COVID-19 has been the scariest and most strength consuming challenge.

Tedros said this is because the respiratory disease passes relatively easily between people.

The DG spoke on Tuesday in Geneva during the media briefing on COVID-19.

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He noted that when the outbreak started, there was an urgent need to get advice, information, training and equipment to front line workers.

“On the fifth of January, days after a cluster of unknown pneumonia was identified in Wuhan, China; WHO shared detailed information on the cases with the world and advised all countries and emergency contact points, to take precautions to reduce the risk of severe acute respiratory infections” he said

Between 10th and 12th of January, WHO published a package of guidance documents for countries.

This covered topics related to the management of an outbreak of a new disease – including finding and testing for the disease, caring for patients and infection prevention and control measures to protect health care workers and also identified and began contracting for validated production of these tests.

By the first week of February, we began shipping tests to over 150 labs around the world, which enabled the countries to quickly identify, track and trace the virus.

“As this was happening, and outbreaks started to spread in other countries, there was a huge surge in demand for personal protective equipment, such as medical masks, gowns, gloves and face protection” .he added