‘URGENT AND AGGRESSIVE ACTION’
WHO declared a global pandemic a year ago
Widespread coronavirus activity that had jumped country borders and began to threaten economies and daily life caused the World Health Organization to declare an official pandemic one year ago on March 11, 2020.
At the time, there had been 125,865 confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide that caused 4,615 deaths. Now, there have been 117 million coronavirus cases across the globe and 2.6 million people have died.
In Massachusetts one year ago, public health officials had reported a mere 95 infected residents with eight in the hospital. Those figures have also ballooned to 562,000 infected Bay State residents and 16,000 deaths.
“We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said while making the pandemic official.
“Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly. It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death,” Ghebreyesus added.
The WHO classifies a pandemic as worldwide spread of a new disease for which many do not have immunity.
Also on March 11, the NBA suspended the season following reports that a player on the Utah Jazz had tested positive shortly after a game.
Hot spot countries at the time included Italy, which had become a complete ghost town with around 12,000 cases and 827 deaths, along with Spain, Germany, China and Iran, which were also experiencing rising case counts and stress on health care systems.
Days after the WHO declaration, the Trump administration issued travel ban on non-Americans who visited various European countries within 14 days of coming to the United States.
Dr. Howard Koh, Harvard professor and former assistant secretary for health under President Obama, reflecting on the last year, said, “From the very beginning of the pandemic outbreak, the country regularly underestimated the danger and overestimated our ability to respond effectively. That theme unfortunately has plagued the response up through the present time.”
Koh, who is also the former Massachusetts commissioner of public health added, “The lifesaving nature of public health, usually an invisible and underappreciated field, is now starkly visible to all.”
When the WHO made its announcement on March 11, there had been just more than 1,000 cases of coronavirus reported in the United States and 38 deaths. In just a year’s time, that number has skyrocketed to 29 million cases and 527,000 deaths, the most of any other country.