“We must not give up,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a virtual briefing.
Geneva, Switzerland:
The head of the World Health Organization insisted on Monday that it was still possible to curb Covid-19 even in places where epidemic outbreaks were increasing, warning against abandoning the fight.
“We must not give up,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a virtual briefing.
He acknowledged that after months of battling the novel coronavirus, which has claimed more than 1.1 million lives worldwide, a certain level of “pandemic fatigue” has set in.
“It’s tough and the fatigue is real,” Tedros said.
But we cannot give up, ”he added, urging leaders to“ balance the disruption of lives and livelihoods ”.
“When leaders act quickly, the virus can be suppressed,” he insisted.
His comment came a day after US President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told CNN the administration’s focus had shifted to mitigation, not eliminating the virus .
“We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation measures,” Meadows said, comparing the deadlier Covid-19 to the seasonal flu.
Tedros said giving up virus control was “dangerous”.
When asked about the comments, WHO emergency chief Michael Ryan insisted that while mitigating the effects of the pandemic was vital, efforts to defeat the virus could not be abandoned.
“We must not give up on trying to suppress the transmission,” he said.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
