Coronavirus Pandemic Far from Being Over- WHO Warns As Global Death Toll Reaches 500,000

In the past few weeks, countries around the world including the US have seen coronavirus spikes specifically after ending lockdown-related restrictions. In fact, a number of US states even reported a groundbreaking number of cases in a single day last weekend, which highlights how the virus is spreading at an alarming rate. The death toll has also risen along with the number of new coronavirus infection cases and has now reportedly crossed half a million.

Recently, the experts at the World Health Organization have commented on the worsening situation of the pandemic in the US and all over the world, emphasizing how the crisis is far from being over. Contrary to the common assumption, the three months lockdowns imposed at the beginning of spring have not controlled the coronavirus spread completely.

Even though research shows that restrictions imposed in the past three months were successful in the prevention of millions of new cases, experts still agreed that people will need to continue preventive guidelines for a long period of time to eradicate the virus completely.

However, in the US, the worsening conditions of the pandemic in several new states that reopened at the start of June have been directly linked to people not following preventive measures as the vast majority believes that the end of the lockdown meant the virus is no longer a threat.

Read also: China Puts 400,000 People in Lockdown After Second Wave of Coronavirus Hits Beijing 

The World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, commented on the rising death toll and cases on Monday, saying “We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives but the hard reality is this is not even close to being over.”

He added that even though a number of countries benefitted from the initially imposed restrictions and controlled the virus to an extent, official reports on the pandemic show that it is accelerating at an even faster rate now.

The coronavirus pandemic originally began six months ago in the city of Wuhan in Mainland, China. Ever since then, it has impacted nearly every country and almost all countries imposed a complete, nationwide lockdown for several weeks as a response.

However, according to the new AFP Tally, regardless of all preventive measures, the global number of cases has now crossed ten million. In addition, the medical community states that the virus may have several strains in a single region at a time, some of which may possibly be deadlier.

This is why some of the countries, including China, the first country to have coronavirus outbreak, have reimposed lockdown in its provinces where new cases of the virus have been diagnosed including Hubei. If the virus still remains in the first countries to be infected, what is the overall progress over the pandemic?

According to WHO, for the majority of countries, the virus remains to be a dangerous threat. Progress is likely to be made only when treatments for the infection are developed along with a vaccine to prevent further infections. Both of these developments can take up to a year.

This means that there will be a need to follow preventive measures for several more months and a possible need for second lockdown in many of the countries as the death toll and the number of new coronavirus infection cases is likely to increase further.