The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday as the new coronavirus, which was unknown to world health officials just three months ago, has rapidly spread to more than 121,000 people from Asia to the Middle East, Europe and United States.
“In the past two weeks the number of cases outside China has increased thirteenfold and the number of affected countries has tripled,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries to climb even higher.”
Tedros said several countries have been able to suppress and control the outbreak, but he scolded other world leaders for failing to act quickly enough or drastically enough to contain the spread.
“We’re deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” he said, just before declaring the pandemic. “We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.”
Cases in China and South Korea have significantly declined, he said, adding that 81 countries don’t have any confirmed cases and 57 countries have 10 or fewer cases.
‘Lack of resolve’
“We can not say this loudly enough or clearly enough or often enough: All countries can still change the course of this pandemic,” he said. “Some countries are struggling with a lack of capacity. Some countries are struggling with a lack of resources. Some countries are struggling with a lack of resolve.”
Declaring a pandemic is charged with major political and economic ramifications, global health experts say. It can further rattle already fragile world markets and lead to more stringent travel and trade restrictions. WHO officials had been reluctant to declare a global pandemic, which is generally defined as an illness that spreads far and wide throughout the world.
WHO officials needed to “make it clear” that the world was in the midst of a pandemic, said Lawrence Gostin, a professor and faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.
It “is clear” the new coronavirus has been a pandemic and WHO was “behind the curve,” Gostin told CNBC on Tuesday.
Changes by the hour
The number of cases and deaths changes by the hour, topping 121,564 with at least 4,373 deaths across the world as of Wednesday morning, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Outside China, 32,778 cases across at least 109 countries had been confirmed as of 3 a.m. ET Tuesday — up from four cases in three countries on Jan. 21, according to the most recent data confirmed by WHO, which tallies the official count.
While the virus is slowing in China where it originated in December, it’s picking up pace across other parts of the world. Italy has the most cases outside China with roughly 10,149 infections, followed closely by Iran with 9,000 infections and South Korea with 7,775, according to Johns Hopkins University data. In the U.S., cases erupted over the last week to more than 1,050 spread across at least 36 states, according to Hopkins.
H1N1
The last time WHO declared a pandemic was during the 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreak. Tedros said COVID-19 is the first time a coronavirus has caused a pandemic. The 2002-2003 outbreak of SARS, which is also a coronavirus, was contained enough to avoid that classification.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said health officials take the characterization “very seriously,” adding “we understand the implication of the word.”
“The fact is right now in countries, we have front-line health workers who need our help,” Ryan said. “We have hospitals who need our support. We have people who need our care and we need to focus on getting our front-line health workers the equipment, supplies and the training they need to do a good job.”
“All countries need to reveal their strategies right now,” he added.
‘You know who you are’
When asked which countries aren’t doing enough to combat the virus, Ryan said he wouldn’t call out individual countries by name, but “you know who you are.”
Some countries are still using a stringent testing criteria, requiring people to show full symptoms, be over a certain age or somehow linked to travel to China, he said. Some countries haven’t been able to stop the virus from spreading within their health-care system or have given up on tracing cases back to their original source, he said.
“Some countries have not been communicating well with their populations and creating some confusions in the minds of the populations and risk communication,” he said, adding that “trust between governments and their citizens really does need to come to the center.”
‘Wake up. Get ready’
Epidemics stress every component of a nation, he said.
“They stress governance, they stress trust between government and the citizen, they stress the hospital system, they stress public health systems, they stress the economic systems,” he said. “In many cases what we’re witnessing across society is a lack of resilience.”
The organization raised its risk assessment level on the virus to its highest level of alert last month.
“This is a reality check for every government on the planet: Wake up. Get ready. This virus may be on its way and you need to be ready. You have a duty to your citizens, you have a duty to the world to be ready,” Ryan said on Feb. 28.
HALIFAX – The Nova Scotia government says it could be months before it reveals how many people are on the wait-list for a family doctor.
The head of the province’s health authority told reporters Wednesday that the government won’t release updated data until the 160,000 people who were on the wait-list in June are contacted to verify whether they still need primary care.
Karen Oldfield said Nova Scotia Health is working on validating the primary care wait-list data before posting new numbers, and that work may take a matter of months. The most recent public wait-list figures are from June 1, when 160,234 people, or about 16 per cent of the population, were on it.
“It’s going to take time to make 160,000 calls,” Oldfield said. “We are not talking weeks, we are talking months.”
The interim CEO and president of Nova Scotia Health said people on the list are being asked where they live, whether they still need a family doctor, and to give an update on their health.
A spokesperson with the province’s Health Department says the government and its health authority are “working hard” to turn the wait-list registry into a useful tool, adding that the data will be shared once it is validated.
Nova Scotia’s NDP are calling on Premier Tim Houston to immediately release statistics on how many people are looking for a family doctor. On Tuesday, the NDP introduced a bill that would require the health minister to make the number public every month.
“It is unacceptable for the list to be more than three months out of date,” NDP Leader Claudia Chender said Tuesday.
Chender said releasing this data regularly is vital so Nova Scotians can track the government’s progress on its main 2021 campaign promise: fixing health care.
The number of people in need of a family doctor has more than doubled between the 2021 summer election campaign and June 2024. Since September 2021 about 300 doctors have been added to the provincial health system, the Health Department said.
“We’ll know if Tim Houston is keeping his 2021 election promise to fix health care when Nova Scotians are attached to primary care,” Chender said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Newfoundland and Labrador‘s chief medical officer is monitoring the rise of whooping cough infections across the province as cases of the highly contagious disease continue to grow across Canada.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says that so far this year, the province has recorded 230 confirmed cases of the vaccine-preventable respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis.
Late last month, Quebec reported more than 11,000 cases during the same time period, while Ontario counted 470 cases, well above the five-year average of 98. In Quebec, the majority of patients are between the ages of 10 and 14.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick has declared a whooping cough outbreak across the province. A total of 141 cases were reported by last month, exceeding the five-year average of 34.
The disease can lead to severe complications among vulnerable populations including infants, who are at the highest risk of suffering from complications like pneumonia and seizures. Symptoms may start with a runny nose, mild fever and cough, then progress to severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive “whooping” sound during inhalation.
“The public, especially pregnant people and those in close contact with infants, are encouraged to be aware of symptoms related to pertussis and to ensure vaccinations are up to date,” Newfoundland and Labrador’s Health Department said in a statement.
Whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics, but vaccination is the most effective way to control the spread of the disease. As a result, the province has expanded immunization efforts this school year. While booster doses are already offered in Grade 9, the vaccine is now being offered to Grade 8 students as well.
Public health officials say whooping cough is a cyclical disease that increases every two to five or six years.
Meanwhile, New Brunswick’s acting chief medical officer of health expects the current case count to get worse before tapering off.
A rise in whooping cough cases has also been reported in the United States and elsewhere. The Pan American Health Organization issued an alert in July encouraging countries to ramp up their surveillance and vaccination coverage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 10, 2024.
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