WHO asks govts to bring down COVID-19 death rates

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Staff Reporter

World Health Organisation (WHO) Director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said governments must work or focus more on bringing down Novel Coronavirus (COVID19) death rates.

Ghebreyesus expressed this concern on Tuesday, the first of two scheduled press conferences this week of the United Nations-affiliated body, from Geneva, Switzerland and carried live over Facebook at 7 p.m. UAE time.

Ghebreyesus initially announced other matters: the official trip of a WHO team of scientists and medical experts to Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, “next week” to touch base on their counterparts to study the animal-to-human transmission of the SARS-CoV2; the WHO-Facebook collaboration for more facts-based approaches against COVID19 in order to protect more people vis-a-vis infodemic as well as false news; and the urgency to address the reported rise of HIV-AIDS cases as measures against it have been neglected due to the ongoing global health crisis.

On the COVID19 global death rates, Ghebreyesus said: “If we manage to reduce the number of deaths, that is very important.”

He said it in the context of the success of Sweden and Japan in doing so despite the climb of COVID19 cases. He said the peak of Sweden’s cases was in April but since then, death rates have been low.

Meanwhile, it is trust in their respective governments and the public’s ownership of their responsibility over the situation that have made the Swedes and the Japanese succeed somehow, according to two BBC news reports.

From the Tuesday press conference, WHO executive director Dr. Michael Ryan expressed gratefulness to all medical and health practitioners who have learnt how to cope and deal with every COVID19 patient, even the vulnerable like those in long-term facilities. He said that global records have seen an “acceleration” of COVID19 cases in June. He added that deaths in April were at 6,000 per day and in May at 5,000 per day.

The John Hopkins University COVID19 Resource Center had recorded a total of 167,900 new cases with 3,779 deaths as of July 7 (Tuesday).