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Expressing alarm both about mounting infections and inadequate government responses, the World Health Organization declared Wednesday that the global coronavirus crisis is now a pandemic but added that it’s not too late for countries to act.\nBy reversing course and using the charged word \u201cpandemic\u201d that it previously shied away from, the UN health agency sought to shock lethargic countries into pulling out all the stops.
\n\u201cWe have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,\u201d said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief.
\n“All countries can still change the course of this pandemic. If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response,” he said. \u201cWe are deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.\u201d
\nThe WHO said Iran and Italy are the new front lines of the battle against the virus that started in China.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re suffering but I guarantee you other countries will be in that situation soon,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief.
\nHe added that the agency thought long and hard about labeling the crisis a pandemic \u2014 meaning a new virus causing sustained outbreaks in multiple regions of the world.
\nThe risk of employing the term, Ryan said, is \u201cif people use it as an excuse to give up.\u201d But the likely benefits, are \u201cpotentially of galvanizing the world to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n