Virus cases top nine million as WHO says pandemic speeds up

Despite Europe easing lockdowns, cases around the world are still rising

Global coronavirus infections topped nine million yesterday shortly after the World Health Organisation warned that the pandemic was accelerating, even as France took its biggest step yet back to normality by allowing millions of children to return to school.

Despite Europe further easing lockdowns, case numbers around the world are still rising, especially in Latin America with Brazil now registering more than 50,000 deaths.

Fears of new clusters

And there are fears of new clusters in the Australian city of Melbourne and Portugal’s capital Lisbon, as well as renewed outbreaks in Beijing and other parts of Asia. “The pandemic is still accelerating,” WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual health forum in Dubai. “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.”

Tedros said the greatest threat facing the world was not the virus itself, which has now killed over 465,000 people and infected nine million, but “the lack of global solidarity and global leadership”.

“We cannot defeat this pandemic with a divided world,” he said. “The politicisation of the pandemic has exacerbated it.”

With a vaccine still far from being developed, the WHO has now called for a rapid increase in production of the steroid dexamethasone, which has been shown to have life-saving potential for critically ill patients.

Feel-good factor

In Europe, the feel-good factor continues as countries ease their lockdown restrictions. Swimming pools and cinemas also reopened in France while children up to the age of 15 returned to school, attendance once again becoming compulsory.