COVID-19 infections growing exponentially, deaths near 50,000: WHO
02 April, 2020
The head of the planet Health Organization voiced deep concern on Wednesday (Apr 1) about the rapid escalation and global spread of COVID-19 cases from the new coronavirus, which has now reached 205 countries and territories.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that his agency, the planet Bank and therefore the International fund backed debt relief to assist developing countries deal with the pandemic's social and economic consequences.
"In the past five weeks there has been a near-exponential growth within the number of latest cases and therefore the number of deaths has quite doubled within the past week," Tedros told a virtual press conference at the organisation's Geneva headquarters.
"In subsequent few days we'll reach 1 million confirmed cases and 50,000 deaths worldwide," he said.
China, where the coronavirus outbreak first emerged in December, reported dwindling new infections on Wednesday and disclosed for the primary time the amount of asymptomatic cases, which could complicate how trends within the outbreak are read.
Asked about the excellence , Dr Maria van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist who was a part of a world team that visited China in February, said the WHO's definition included laboratory-confirmed cases "regardless of the event of symptoms".
"From data that we've seen from China especially , we all know that individuals who are identified, who are listed as asymptomatic, about 75 percent of these actually continue to develop symptoms," she said, describing them as having been during a "pre-symptomatic phase"
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com
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