WHO warns of virus spurt; Brazil deaths at 50,000

Dubai, June 22: The World Health Organisation sent out a fresh warning on Monday over the dangers of the new Covid19 even as France returned to life by staging an annual music festival and sending millions of children back to school. In spite of numerous European countries further easing their lockdown restrictions, cases around the world are rising especially in Latin America with Brazil now registering over 50,000 deaths.

There are also fears of a second wave with Australians being warned against travelling to Melbourne. “The pandemic is still accelerating,” WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the virtual health forum organised by Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

“We know that the pandemic is much more than a health crisis, it is an economic crisis, a social crisis and in many countries a political crisis. “Its effects will be felt for decades to come.” Ghebreyesus said the greatest threat facing the world is not the virus itself, which has now killed over 471,000 people and infected nearly nine million worldwide, but “the lack of global solidarity and global leadership”. “We cannot defeat this pandemic with a divided world,” he said.

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“The politicisation of the pandemic has exacerbated it.” Brazil falls into that bracket with President Jair Bolsonaro comparing the virus to a “little flu” and arguing that the economic impact of shutdowns is often worse than the virus itself. Brazil is the second worst-affected country behind the United States, another country where political infighting has prevented a unified policy to handle the virus. The spread of Covid19 is accelerating across Latin America, with Mexico, Peru and Chile also hard-hit as death tolls soar and healthcare facilities are pushed toward collapse. Mexico City has delayed reopening markets, restaurants, malls, hotels and places of worship, with the country now recording over 20,000 Covid-19 deaths.

Highlighting the region’s woes, Peru passed 8,000 deaths on Sunday despite preparing to reopen shopping malls on Monday.