"Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong
direction, the virus remains public enemy number one," WHO Director
General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing from the UN agency’s
headquarters in Geneva.
"If
basics are not followed, the only way this pandemic is going to go-it is going
to get worse and worse and worse."
Global
infections stand at 13M, according to a Reuters tally, with more than half a
million deaths.
Tedros,
whose leadership has been heavily criticised by US President Donald Trump, said
that of 230,000 new cases on Sunday, 80% were from 10 nations, and 50% from
just two countries.
The
United States and Brazil are the countries worst hit.
"There
will be no return to the old normal for the foreseeable future ... There is a
lot to be concerned about," Tedros added, in some of his strongest
comments of recent weeks.
Tedros
said the WHO had still not received formal notification of the US pullout
announced by Trump. The US president says the WHO pandered to China, where the
Covid-19 disease was first detected, at the start of the crisis.
Trump,
who wore a protective face mask for the first time in public at the weekend,
has himself been accused by political opponents of not taking the coronavirus
seriously enough, something he denies.
A WHO
advance team has gone to China to investigate the origins of the new
coronavirus, first discovered in the city of Wuhan. The team’s members are in
quarantine, as per standard procedure, before they begin work with Chinese
scientists, WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan said.
