Global coronavirus deaths reached 250,000 on Monday after recorded infections topped 3.5 million, a Reuters tally of official government data showed, although the rate of fatalities has slowed.
North America and European countries accounted for most of the new deaths and cases reported in recent days, but numbers were rising from smaller bases in Latin America, Africa and Russia.
The WHO logo at headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. PICTURE: Reuters/Denis Balibouse/File photo
WHO SAYS POMPEO REMARKS ON VIRUS ORIGIN “SPECULATIVE”, SEEKS DATA
The World Health Organization said on Monday that comments by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo citing “evidence” that the new coronavirus had emerged from a Chinese laboratory were “speculative”, and called for a science-based inquiry.
Pompeo said on Sunday there was “a significant amount of evidence” that the virus emerged from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, but did not dispute US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that it was not man-made.
Dr Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergencies expert, told an online press conference from Geneva: “We have not received any data-specific evidence from the US Government relating to the purported origin of the virus. So from our perspective, this remains speculative.”
As an “evidence-based organisation”, Ryan said, the WHO was keen to receive any information on the origin of the virus, as this was “exceptionally important” for its future control.
“So if that data and evidence is available, then it will be for the United States government to decide whether and when it can be shared,” he said.
Scientists have advised the WHO that genome sequencing shows the virus to be of “natural origin”.
Ryan said science, not politics, should be at the heart of exchanges with Chinese scientists on the issue, warning against projecting an “aggressive investigation of wrongdoing”.
The virus is believed to have originated in bats and jumped to humans via another species. Dr Maria van Kerkhove, a WHO specialist in viruses that make such jumps, said it was important to determine this intermediate host.
As countries begin easing lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of the virus, many hope to contain new clusters of infection through systematic contact tracing, helped by mobile phone apps and other technology.
But Ryan said these did not make more traditional “boots-on-the-ground” surveillance redundant.
“We are very, very keen to stress that IT tools do not replace the basic public health workforce that is going to be needed to trace, test, isolate and quarantine,” he said, praising South Korea and Singapore for their strategy.
Ryan said the WHO welcomed recent clinical trial data for Gilead Sciences Inc’s antiviral drug remdesivir, saying there were “signals of hope” for a potential use against COVID-19.
“We will be engaging in discussions with Gilead and the US Government as to how this drug may be made more widely available as further data emerges on its effectiveness,” he said.
Steven Solomon, the WHO’s principal legal officer, said two countries had proposed consideration of letting Taiwan attend the WHO’s May 18-19 annual health assembly as an observer.
Solomon said the WHO recognised the People’s Republic of China as the “one legitimate representative of China”, in keeping with UN policy since 1971, and that the question of Taiwan’s attendance was one for the WHO’s 194 member states.
China, which views the island as a wayward Chinese province and not a country, says it represents Taiwan adequately in the WHO.
– STEPHANIE NEBEHAY and EMMA FARGE, Reuters
Globally, there were 3,062 new deaths and 61,923 new cases over the past 24 hours, taking total cases to 3.58 million.
That easily exceeds the estimated 140,000 deaths worldwide in 2018 caused by measles, and compares with around three to five million cases of severe illness caused annually by seasonal influenza, according to the World Health Organization.
While the current trajectory of COVID-19 falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10 per cent of patients, experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic.
The concerns come as several countries begin to ease strict lockdowns that have been credited with helping contain the spread of the virus.
“We could easily have a second or a third wave because a lot of places aren’t immune,” Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at Canberra Hospital, told Reuters. He noted the world was well short of herd immunity, which requires around 60% of the population to have recovered from the disease.
The first death linked to COVID-19 was reported on 10th January in Wuhan, China, after the coronavirus first emerged there in December. Global fatalities grew at a rate of one to two per cent in recent days, down from 14 per cent on 21st March, according to the Reuters data.
Death rate anomalies
Mortality rates from recorded infections vary greatly from country to country.
Collignon said any country with a mortality rate of more than two per cent almost certainly had underreported case numbers. Health experts fear those ratios could worsen in regions and countries less prepared to deal with the health crisis.
“If your mortality rate is higher than two per cent, you’ve missed a lot of cases,” he said, noting that countries overwhelmed by the outbreak were less likely to conduct testing in the community and record deaths outside of hospitals.
In the United States, around half the country’s state governors partially reopened their economies over the weekend, while others, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, declared the move was premature.
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who battled COVID-19 last month, has said the country was over the peak but it was still too early to relax lockdown measures.
Even in countries where the suppression of the disease has been considered successful, such as Australia and New Zealand which have recorded low daily rates of new infections for weeks, officials have been cautious.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has predicated a full lifting of curbs on widespread public adoption of a mobile phone tracing app and increased testing levels.
