WHO Director General
(Photo : Reuters)

World Health Organization Director-General claims that it is still possible to control and stop the infectious coronavirus according to a published article in Straits Times.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), attended a daily press conference to give updates about the infectious coronavirus at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

The World Health Organization was questioned again why it has not yet declared the COVID-19 as a pandemic health concern despite the spiking increase of numbers who were affected with the virus.

The director-general said that it is still possible to contain and stop the virus. During the daily press conference, he said: "This is not a one-way street. We can push this virus back."

He also added that the World Health Organization will not hesitate to declare the virus as pandemic if the evidence suggests so but in the meantime it does not. Ghebreyesus also said that one of the factors they see also is the number of cases.

Hubei province in China is where the virus originated. According to the World Health Organization, 90 percent of more than 89,000 cases COVID-19 globally is centered in the province but they claim these numbers continue to fall.

China reported also that 206 individuals were affected by the virus on March 1 and it is the lowest recorded number of patients since the virus began on Jan.22. Moreover, he also said that there were only eight cases of individuals infected with the virus who are living outside the province.

During the daily press conference on March 2, he also said that in the last 24 hours there were almost nine times more cases of COVID-19 outside China than inside the country. This supports his claim that the number of individuals infected with COVID-19 in China continues to fall.

Their greatest concern at the moment is the spiking increase of COVID-19 cases in South Korea, Italy, Japan, and Iran because out of 9,000 reported COVID-19 cases, 80 percent are found in these countries. Other countries who have COVID-19 have recently recorded 10 cases or even fewer while the remaining more than 100 countries remain uncontaminated with the virus. 

The WHO also revealed that South Korea has the largest number of COVID-19 cases. It has recorded more than 5,000 individuals infected with the virus and this is more than half of the recorded cases outside China. Moreover, he is also happy to announce that there were countries that have stopped or either contained the virus in the last two weeks.

For the WHO Director-General, reports about the contamination of COVID-19 in other countries is a good indication that the spread of the virus in South Korea can also be controlled and contaminated. 

However, COVID-19 in South Korea has unique features. Dr. Tedlos said: "We are in uncharted territory. We have never before seen a respiratory pathogen that is capable of community transmission, but which can also be contained with the right measures."

Despite this, he is optimistic that it can be contaminated just like what happened to other countries if there will be a strict and good implementation or preventive measures. Other countries who were able to contaminate immediately the spread of the virus were said to be aggressive in implementing its measures during the early stage of COVID-19 reported cases.