#WHO warns COVID-19 pandemic is ‘accelerating’ and ‘getting worse’

The director-general of the World Health Organization warned this week that the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating and the virus has not reached its peak worldwide.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the statement at a weekly webinar Tuesday as he announced the UN was forming a panel to evaluate its response and the response of countries to the deadly pandemic.

“The virus is not under control. It is getting worse … more than 544,000 lives have been lost. The pandemic is still accelerating. The total number of cases has doubled in the last six weeks,” Ghebreyesus said.

Ghebreyesus also urged nations to work together to solve the crisis.

“The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself,” he said, according to the Guardian.

“Rather, it’s the lack of leadership and solidarity at the global and national level. We cannot defeat this pandemic as a divided world. The virus thrives on division but is thwarted when we unite,” he said.

“Together is the solution, unless we want to give the advantage the enemy, to the virus that has taken the world hostage — and this has to stop,” he added.

The UN review body will be headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, according to the report.

More than half a million people have died from the coronavirus across the globe, with more than 132,000 killed by the virus in the United States.