Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus addressed journalists from the WHO headquarters in a virtual press conference with only himself and other WHO officials present.<\/p>\n
\u201cEurope has now become the epicenter of the pandemic, with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined, apart from China.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore cases are now being reported every day than were reported in China at the height of its epidemic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
More than 132,500 COVID-19 cases have been reported in 123 countries and territories, with almost 5,000 people losing their lives.<\/p>\n
Tedros said that even though COVID-19 captured the world\u2019s attention, there are still many other health issues people continue to face every single day, and that WHO is continuing to work on.<\/p>\n
\u201cBabies are still being born. Essential surgery is continuing. People still need emergency care after road traffic crashes. People still need treatment for cancer, diabetes, HIV, malaria and many other diseases,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He warned: \u201cAny country that looks at the experience of other countries with large epidemics and thinks \u2018that won\u2019t happen to us\u2019 is making a deadly mistake. It can happen to any country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Countries need to \u201cdetect, protect and treat\u201d to break the chains of transmissions, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur message to countries continues to be: You must take a comprehensive approach. Not testing alone. Not contact tracing alone. Not quarantine alone. Not social distancing alone. Do it all,\u201d said Tedros.<\/p>\n
The WHO said it shipped supplies of personal protective equipment to 56 countries, and is shipping to a further 28 countries, and it sent almost 1.5 million diagnostic tests to 120 countries.<\/p>\n
Switzerland, which hosts the WHO, announced some sweeping measures that includes closing schools throughout the country and imposing a ban on public gatherings of more than 100 people until the end of April.<\/p>\n
Bars and restaurants are limited to 50 guests while the government pledged 10 billion Swiss francs ($10.6 billion) in emergency aid to support the economy in the country with a population of some 8.6 million.<\/p>\n
More than 1,000 cases were reported in Switzerland by federal authorities as of Friday, as well as nine deaths, with most victims elderly people with pre-existing health conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Europe has become the “new epicenter” of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) chief said Friday. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus addressed journalists from the WHO headquarters in a virtual press conference with only himself and other WHO officials present. \u201cEurope has now become the epicenter of the pandemic, with more reported cases and deaths …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":65068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,80,63,17,1,107,118,895],"tags":[78522,78525,41438],"class_list":["post-65067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-europe","category-general","category-health","category-hot","category-life","tag-coronavirus","tag-europe-news","tag-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}