Geneva: The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the COVID-19 outbreak as pandemic. However, giving hope the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the virus can be suppressed and controlled.
In view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases, India has stopped giving visas to foreigners till 15 April in a bid to stop the spread of the virus in the country.
Declaring the virus pandemic, the WHO Director-General said, “Describing the situation as a pandemic does not change WHO’s assessment of the threat posed by this coronavirus. It doesn’t change what WHO is doing, and it doesn’t change what countries should do.”
COVID-19 was declared as pandemic under three general criteria which are that the virus can cause illness or death, its transmitted from person to person in a sustained manner and is spread across the world.
However, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus added that the virus can be suppressed and controlled. If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and moblize people in the response, those with a handful of novel coronovirus cases can prevent those cases becoming clusters, and those clusters becoming community transmission.
Meanwhile, the cases of COVID-19 in India rose to 62.