This archive report was first published on 22 August 2020.
WHO Hopes Pandemic Over in Two Years as Europe Battles Rising Cases ¶
August 22, 2020
The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed hope that the coronavirus pandemic can be brought under control in less than two years, as Europe battles rising numbers of new cases.
Western Europe has seen a surge in infection levels, particularly in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, sparking fears of a full-fledged second wave.
Madrid officials have recommended that people in the most affected areas stay at home to help curb the spread, as the country registered more than 8,000 new cases in 24 hours.
France also reported a second consecutive day of more than 4,000 new cases, with metropolitan areas accounting for most of those infections.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus drew favourable comparisons with the notorious flu pandemic of 1918, saying, 'We have a disadvantage of globalisation, closeness, connectedness, but an advantage of better technology, so we hope to finish this pandemic before less than two years.'
He added, 'By utilising the available tools to the maximum and hoping that we can have additional tools like vaccines, I think we can finish it in a shorter time than the 1918 flu.'
The WHO also recommended that children over 12 years old use masks in the same situations as adults to stop the virus spread.
Lebanon has reintroduced severe restrictions, including nighttime curfews, to tackle a rise in infections, which comes as the country is still dealing with the shock from a huge explosion in the capital Beirut that killed dozens earlier this month.
Officials fear Lebanon's fragile health system would struggle to cope with a further spike in COVID-19 cases, especially after some hospitals near the port were damaged in the explosion.
The Americas have borne the brunt of the virus in health terms, accounting for more than half of the world's fatalities.
US presidential candidate Joe Biden said, 'We lead the world in deaths,' and promised to implement a national plan to fight the pandemic on his first day in office if elected.
However, new daily cases of the coronavirus have been dropping sharply in the United States for weeks, but experts are unsure if Americans will have the discipline to bring the epidemic under control.
Further south, Latin American countries are counting the wider costs of the pandemic, including an expansion of criminal activity and rising poverty.
Without an effective political reaction, 'at a regional level we can talk about a regression of up to 10 years in the levels of multidimensional poverty', Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva of the UN Development Programme told AFP.
The WHO said the coronavirus pandemic appeared to be stabilising in Brazil, one of the world's worst-hit countries, and any reversal of its rampant spread would be 'a success for the world.'
Economies around the globe have been ravaged by the pandemic, which has infected more than 22 million and killed nearly 800,000 since it emerged in China late last year.
New financial figures laid bare the huge cost of the pandemic in Britain, where government debt soared past £2 trillion ($2.6 trillion) for the first time in the UK.
Finance Minister Rishi Sunak said, 'Without that support things would have been far worse.'
Even Germany, famed for its financial prudence, was waking up to a new reality with Finance Minister Olaf Scholz conceding his country would need to continue borrowing at a high level next year to deal with the virus fallout.
