Family members wearing protective gear offer prayers next to the pyre of a victim who died of Covid-19 coronavirus at an open air crematorium set up for the coronavirus victims inside a defunct granite quarry on the outskirts of Bangalore on May 1, 2021. Picture: Manjunath Kiran/AFP
Surprisingly, more people have been diagnosed with Covid-19 in the past two weeks than in the first six months of the pandemic, World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced on Monday.
Ghebreyesus was addressing a media briefing on the latest global status of Covid-19.
India and Brazil account for more than half of last week’s cases.
Ghebreyesus said there were many other countries all over the world that “face a very fragile situation.”
“What is happening in India and Brazil could happen elsewhere unless we all take these public health precautions the WHO has been calling for since the beginning of the pandemic,” he told reporters at the news briefing in Geneva.
“Covid-19 is a very different disease, but the approach is the same. The absence of any one of these key measures presents a weakness that this virus will exploit, as we are seeing all over the world.”
He said the WHO was hard at work trying to battle the state of the pandemic in India.
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“WHO is providing critical equipment and supplies including oxygen concentrators, lab supplies and mobile field hospitals.”
“We’re also providing advice for people how to provide care at home for families unable to find a hospital bed. For patients with the severe or critical disease, WHO recommends treatment with dexamethasone.”
He said the WHO foundation was also raising funds to support the need for oxygen and related supplies globally.