The World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that 24 cases of coronavirus have been exported from Italy to 14 countries.
WHO also revealed that 97 cases have been exported from Iran to 11 countries.
In his opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 – 28 February 2020, WHO’s Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated that in the past 24 hours, China reported 329 cases – the lowest in more than a month.
Mr Ghebreyesus who on Friday reeled out figures regarding the spread of the virus said that as of 6am Geneva time this morning, China reported a total of 78,959 cases of COVID-19 to WHO, including 2791 deaths.
“Outside China, there are now 4351 cases in 49 countries and 67 deaths.
“Since yesterday, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Netherlands, and Nigeria have all reported their first cases. All these cases have links to Italy,” Mr Ghebreyesus told newsmen on Friday.
The Director-General also said that the continued increase in the number of cases, and the number of affected countries over the last few days, are clearly of concern.
He, however, noted that WHO’s epidemiologists have been monitoring these developments continuously, and have now increased its assessment of the risk of spread and the risk of the impact of COVID-19 to very high at a global level.
“What we see at the moment are linked epidemics of COVID-19 in several countries, but most cases can still be traced to known contacts or clusters of cases. We do not see evidence as yet that the virus is spreading freely in communities.
“As long as that’s the case, we still have a chance of containing this virus, if robust action is taken to detect cases early, isolate and care for patients and trace contacts.
“As I said yesterday, there are different scenarios in different countries and different scenarios within the same country,” Mr Ghebreyesus said while briefing the media.
According to him, the key to containing this virus is to break the chains of transmission.
