GENEVA, June 29. /TASS/. There is no end in sight for the coronavirus pandemic, the infection rates are increasing, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva Monday.
"The virus still has a lot of room to move," he said. "But the hard reality is that this is not even close to being over." "Although many countries have made some progress, globally the pandemic is actually speeding up," the WHO chief added.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus then informed that an expert meeting will take place this week to evaluate progress in research and to set out priorities to fight COVID-19 at this new stage.
"This week we will convene a second meeting to assess progress on research and development and re-evaluate research priorities for the next stage of the pandemic," he noted. The WHO head then recalled that June 30 "marks six months since WHO received the first reports of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in China." "The six-month anniversary of the outbreak coincides with reaching 10 million cases and 500,000 deaths," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged.
Analyzing the results of these six months of fighting the pandemic, the director general noted both positive ones such as "resilience, inventiveness, solidarity and kindness" and negative ones of "concerning signs of stigma, misinformation and the politicization of the pandemic" across the globe.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus — named COVID-19 by the WHO — have been reported in every corner of the globe.
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 10,000,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 504,700 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 5,568,200 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.