ISLAMABAD – The coronavirus pandemic is “accelerating” across the world —and physical distancing measures are not enough to stop the spread, thehead of the World Health Organization warned Monday.
“Asking people to stay at home and other physical distancing measures arean important way to slow down the spread of the virus and buy time, butthey are defensive measures that won’t help us to win,” Director-GeneralTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing.
Tedros said countries hit with the virus also need to implement tacticssuch as isolating and caring for every confirmed case, as well as tracingand quarantining all of the patient’s close contacts.
“To win, we need to attack the virus with aggressive and targeted tactics,”he told reporters.
Tedros acknowledged that the infectious disease has spread rapidly to morethan 300,000 peoplelink in“almost every country in the world.”
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“The pandemic is accelerating,” he said. “It took 67 days from the firstreported case to reach the first 100,000 cases, 11 days for the second100,000 and just four days for the third 100,000.”
But he insisted that it’s not too late to stop the spread of the dangerousbuglink,which first emerged in December, New York Post has revealed.
“We are not prisoners to statistics,” he said. “We are not hopelessbystanders. We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.”
