COVID-19: 100 Days Since WHO Notified Of First Pneumonia Case In China

Thursday marks 100 days since the World Health Organisation was notified of the first cases of “pneumonia with unknown cause” in China.

"It’s incredible to reflect on how dramatically the world has changed, in such a short period of time", said the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"On the 1st of January, just hours after we were notified of the first cases, WHO activated its Incident Management Support Team, to coordinate our response at headquarters, regional and country level. 

Since then, the modern world has seen a health disaster like no other, with coronavirus cases hovering at 1.5 million and a death toll of over 88,000.

On the 5th of January, WHO officially notified all Member States of this new outbreak, and published a disease outbreak news on its website.

By January 10, it issued a comprehensive package of guidance to countries on how to detect, test and manage potential cases, and protect health workers.

The WHO chief also said that "The most powerful should lead the way and please quarantine Covid politics", in an apparent reference to US President Donald Trump's criricism on Tuesday of the World body for being 'China-centric' with a threat to squeeze US funding.

"“We will have many body bags in front of us if we don’t behave", he commented.

The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2020

"Please, unity at national level, no using Covid or political points," Dr Tedros said. "Second, honest solidarity at the global level. And honest leadership from the US and China".

It was on January 22 and again a week later, after the first cases of human-to-human transmission were reported outside China, that the WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern – its highest level of alarm. At the time there were 98 cases outside China, and no deaths.

In February an international team of experts from Canada, China, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Nigeria, the Russian Federation, Singapore and the United States of America visited affected provinces in China to learn more about the virus, the outbreak and the response, and to glean lessons for the rest of the world.

In early February the United Nations Crisis Management Team was activated, to coordinate the entire machinery the UN to support countries as effectively as possible.

"Through WHO’s network of 6 regional offices and 150 country offices, we’ve worked closely with governments around the world to prepare their health systems for COVID-19, and to respond when cases arrive. We issued a Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan, which identified the major actions countries need to take, and the resources needed to carry them out. Governments and partners rose to the challenge. More than US$800 million has been pledged or received for the response", Ghebreyesus.remarked.

That includes more than US$140 million from more than 229,000 individuals and organisations raised through the Solidarity Response Fund.

"We activated our global expert networks to tap the world’s leading epidemiologists, clinicians, social-scientists, statisticians, virologists, risk communicators and others, to make our response truly global and capture all the support we need from all over the world, from WHO experts and other experts in many other institutions globally", he added.

The WHO has worked with numerous media and tech companies including Facebook, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, Messenger, Pinterest, SnapChat, Tencent, TikTok, Twitter, Viber, WhatsApp, YouTube and more to counter myths and misinformation with reliable, evidence-based advice.

The WhatsApp chatbot now has more than 12 million followers and is available in 7 languages, including Hindi and Portuguese, were launched on Wednesday.