The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has warned that the world “is approaching the highest rate of infection by COVID-19 so far during the pandemic”, due to the large increase of cases in many areas of the planet.
At a press conference this Friday from Geneva (Switzerland), Tedros lamented that cases and deaths from COVID-19 “continue to increase at a worrying rate.” “Globally, the number of new cases per week has almost doubled in the last two months,” he specified.
According to his data, these figures indicate that “it is approaching the highest infection rate that we have seen so far during the pandemic.” Tedros pointed out that one reason is that some countries that had previously avoided the widespread transmission of COVID-19 are now seeing “a sharp increase in infections.”
Tedros has given Papua New Guinea as an example, which until the beginning of the year had reported fewer than 900 cases and 9 deaths. “Now it has reported more than 9,300 cases of and 82 deaths. Although these figures are still lower than those of other countries, the increase is sharp and the WHO is very concerned about the possibility of a much larger epidemic,” he said.
