Covid-19 worst crisis since WW 2 – UN
GENEVA: The global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic continued to worsen on Wednesday despite unprecedented lockdowns, as the head of the United Nations sounded the alarm on what it said was humanity’s worst crisis since World War 2.
The warning came as United States President Donald Trump told Americans to brace for a “very painful” few weeks after the US registered its deadliest 24 hours of the crisis.
The number of deaths in the US on Wednesday topped 4,000, twice the 2,010 recorded late Saturday, Johns Hopkins data showed.
“The combination of the two facts and the risk that it contributes to enhanced instability, enhanced unrest and enhanced conflict are things that make us believe that this is the most challenging crisis we have faced since the second World War,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters.
The New York-based UN was founded at the end of the war in 1945 and has 193 member-states.
“A stronger and more effective response... is only possible in solidarity if everybody comes together and if we forget political games and understand that it is humankind that is at stake,” Guterres said.
There are more than 858,000 coronavirus cases around the world and over 42,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“We are far from having a global package to help the developing world to create the conditions both to suppress the disease and to address the dramatic consequences,” Guterres warned, pointing to unemployment, collapse of small firms and vulnerable people in the informal economy.
“We are slowly moving in the
right direction, but we need to speed up and we need to do much more if we want to defeat the virus.”
The UN on Tuesday created a new fund to help developing countries after last week appealing for donations for poor and conflict-hit nations.
Beyond traditional aid from rich
countries, “we need to have innovative financial instruments” so that developing nations are able to respond to the crisis, Guterres said.
He warned that the coronavirus pandemic could return from poorer countries, especially in Africa, to hit wealthy countries again and that millions could die.