The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak can now be characterised as a pandemic, the head of the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday.
“We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva. “We have, therefore, made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a pandemic."
"We have never before seen a pandemic sparked by a coronavirus," he said.
A pandemic is an epidemic on a far greater geographic scale that affects a much large number of people.
The WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern—its "highest level of alarm"—on January 30 when there were fewer than 100 cases of COVID-19 outside China and eight cases of human-to-human transmission of the disease.
Now, there are more than 1,18,000 cases in 114 countries and 4,291 people have died, Tedros said.
