WHO nonetheless struggling to handle pandemic response

When the World Health Organization declared the Coronavirus a pandemic one 12 months in the past, it did so solely after weeks of resisting the time period and sustaining the extremely infectious virus may nonetheless be stopped.
A 12 months later, the U.N. company continues to be struggling to maintain on prime of the evolving science of COVID-19, to influence nations to desert their nationalistic tendencies and assist get vaccines the place they’re wanted most. WHO waved its first huge warning flag on January 30, 2020, by calling the outbreak a world well being emergency.
Only when WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared a “Pandemic” six weeks later, on March 11, did most governments take motion, consultants say. By then, it was too late, and the virus had reached each continent besides Antarctica. The company made some expensive missteps alongside the best way: It suggested individuals towards carrying masks for months and asserted that COVID-19 wasn’t broadly unfold within the air. It additionally declined to publicly name out nations “particularly China” for errors that senior WHO officers grumbled about privately.
Globally, there’s been 118 million coronavirus circumstances and a pair of.6 million confirmed deaths, in line with information from Johns Hopkins University. The United States leads the world with 29 million circumstances and greater than 529,000 deaths.