margarita25
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COVID-19 -Media, Maps, Videos, Timelines, CDC/WHO Resources, etc. ***NO DISCUSSION***
- Thread starter margarita25
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margarita25
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2012
- Messages
- 51,333
- Reaction score
- 206,366
margarita25
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2012
- Messages
- 51,333
- Reaction score
- 206,366
COVAX, the ACT-Accelerator Vaccines pillar
Insuring accelerated vaccine development and manufacture
Introduction
Developing a vaccine against COVID-19 is the most pressing challenge of our time. The global pandemic has already caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and disrupted the lives of billions more. As well as reducing the tragic loss of life, introduction of a vaccine will prevent the loss $375 B1 to the global economy every month.
Developing one or more safe and effective vaccines is also one of the most complex challenges of our time. Unlike with past vaccine development, scaling up manufacturing and completion of human trials for vaccine candidates must be done in parallel. Even with accelerated investment in manufacturing, and the completion of trials to ensure vaccine candidates are safe and effective, there is no scenario in which supply over the next 18 months will exceed demand although at today’s anticipated trajectory some vaccine candidates could become available within this time frame.
Governments are answerable to their populations and to their taxpayers, and with so many lives and livelihoods at stake some are understandably pursuing bilateral deals with manufacturers to secure access to scarce future vaccine supplies. As treasuries around the world seek to address unprecedented revenue shocks, such strategies bring hope and instill confidence. But they also bring risk. In normal times, vaccine development is long, complicated, and more often than not ends in failure; it is difficult to know which deals will actually result in getting any vaccine.
Many leaders have called for a global solution to address a global issue and for a shared endeavor that involves the best shared science to resolve in the shortest possible time a pandemic involving every region and territory on the planet. The COVAX Pillar provides this solution: through portfolio diversification, pooling of financial and scientific resources, and economies of scale, participating governments and blocs can hedge the risk of backing unsuccessful candidates just as governments with limited or no ability to finance their own bilateral procurement can be assured access to life-saving vaccines that would otherwise have been beyond their reach.
The goal of the COVAX Pillar is to end the acute phase of the global pandemic by the end of 2021. If it succeeds in this goal, through the appropriate allocation of safe and effective doses of vaccines in phases determined by epidemiology and public health to slow and ultimately to stop the pandemic, it could save millions of lives and transform the economic prospects of governments and individuals.
The COVAX Pillar is an urgently needed approach to getting a safe and effective vaccine faster, through financing that shares the risks of development and creates the capacity for manufacturing vaccine doses now, in parallel with clinical development, and before they are shown to work. It will show how participating countries, by buying into a share of many vaccine candidates instead of just a few, will be able to insure themselves against the failure of any individual candidate and secure successful vaccines in a cost-effective, targeted way.
COVAX: The Context
When a successful vaccine is found, worldwide demand will be in the billions of doses to address the epidemiologic needs. But initial supply will inevitably be limited. The current best-case estimate is that no more than a few hundred million doses will be available by December 2020 in the current environment, scaling to a cumulative 2 billion doses by end 2021.
1 IMF estimates, published on April 14 The Great Lockdown: Worst Economic Downturn Since the Great Depression downturn-since-the-great-depression/
It is difficult to predict which vaccine(s) will be successful. Indeed, the vast majority of vaccines in early development fail. The probability of success for a vaccine in early stage development is less than 20% prior to Phase 2 clinical trial.
This means that the best chance of success for any country is to diversify and access a broad portfolio of vaccine candidates. This increases the chances of success and allows the vaccines that are successful to be shared. Such an approach would enable every country to gain access to a much broader array of vaccines than they would otherwise have through multiple bilateral agreements with individual manufacturers. For countries with local development or manufacturing capacity, this ‘portfolio approach’ insures countries against the risk of their own candidates proving unsuccessful or less effective, or that domestic manufacturing capacity is unsuitable, leaving them with no vaccines at all.
Pooling risks not only means a greater chance at shared rewards through access to successful vaccine candidates, it also means lower prices as competition in a non-pooled risks scenario leads to a disorderly market with price gouging as individual buyers seek to outbid each other for limited resources.
Over time, there will be adequate doses available to vaccinate all who need vaccination, assuming a safe and effective vaccine is found, sufficient investment in manufacturing capacity is secured, and adequate market incentives are established for manufacturers. In the meantime, an allocation methodology is required that stratifies and prioritizes risk groups (for example, healthcare workers, elderly, vulnerable groups) for vaccination in such a way to reduce the spread of virus and the impact of the virus on lives, livelihoods, health systems and economies as quickly as possible.
The biggest challenge will be supply of vaccines for the period while supply is scaling up. While massive efforts are underway to establish large production capacity, initial supplies will need to be prioritized. The main allo- cation criteria are based on the most urgent goal of reducing mortality, protecting health systems and policy.
Priority populations will be determined based on the characteristics of the specific vaccine(s) that demonstrate safety and efficacy. Policy recommendations will lay out the priority populations with the first round of vac- cination likely to consider:
- Health care system workers (1% of global population)
- Adults over 65 years old (8% of global population)
- Other high-risk adults with underlying conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, etc. (15%)
COVAX: The ACT-Accelerator Vaccines pillar
The ACT-Accelerator is a global collaboration to accelerate the development, production and equitable access to new COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. It is a partnership of key stakeholders – political leaders, public and private sector partners, civil society, academia – that leverages each partner’s strengths to drive towards accelerated and equitable access.
Within the ACT-Accelerator, COVAX, the vaccines pillar, is driving the work on vaccine development, manufacturing, procurement and delivery at scale, as well as policy and allocation, bringing it together into the type of agreement described above. It leverages the expertise of existing organisations (CEPI, Gavi and WHO) and industry partners in a new way to meet the challenge of a pandemic.
The COVAX Pillar also ensures that the required additional activities for the successful launch of vaccine are supported in parallel – including detailed demand and supply scenarios, the regulatory dialogue to avoid time lags, the setup of an allocation framework and mechanism and supporting the buildup of infrastructure and health systems preparedness.
A fully financed COVAX pillar could give all participating governments a guaranteed share of any future successful vaccine production.
The COVAX pillar will simultaneously address both pull financing (advance market commitments), and push financing (at-risk investments for R&D, manufacturing capacity reservation & inventory), and agree to do so now to drive investment at high speed, volume, and ‘at risk’, and to secure manufacturing inventory build-up and future supply. By combining the power and expertise of CEPI’s R&D role on the push side with Gavi’s procurement and allocation function on the pull side, the COVAX pillar is able to ensure the manufacturing of doses now, something neither organisation, government or financier could achieve entirely on its own. Supported by the World Health Organization in assuring effective regulation and optimal allocation, both CEPI and Gavi will use the depth and breadth of their partnerships with governments, private sector, academia, civil society, and financiers to achieve the accelerated impact the world needs from the COVAX pillar.
Why we need to act now
1. Mitigate economic damage – for every month that this pandemic continues, $375 billion[1 is lost from
the global economy. Acting now to accelerate development, manufacture, and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine will save hundreds of thousands of lives and protect the livelihoods of millions more.
2. Accelerate availability of vaccine – if we follow the traditional course of vaccine development, we could face years of delay. Such a delay will cost lives and trillions of dollars in economic damage. CO- VAX will enable at-risk investments in production capacity across several candidates now – to ensure that, upon regulatory approval, doses can be made immediately available at scale.
3. Ensure globally fair allocation and access for low and middle income countries (LMIC) - nobody is safe from COVID-19 until everybody is safe. COVAX not only represents the best solution to end this pandemic, it is also the fairest way to allocate vaccine for all countries to ensure that access can be provided for every country.
The COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility
When sufficiently capitalized, the COVAX pillar will immediately offer advance purchase agreements to vaccine candidates meeting technical threshold criteria. This will be done to produce vaccines at risk before we have results of efficacy trials. Offering between five to ten such contracts will allow a specially created financial instrument, the COVAX Facility, which sits within the pillar, to:
a) procure cumulative 2 billion doses by end 2021, ensuring that participating countries receive allocations of vaccine as quickly as possible including an emergency buffer (10% of doses)
b) procure the highest possible volume of vaccine from each manufacturer, resulting in the greatest number of doses at the most economically efficient price
c) provide for globally fair and equitable allocation of vaccine, saving millions of lives, and protecting millions more livelihoods, and bringing the acute phase of the pandemic to an end in the most efficient fashion possible.
Initial capitalization would provide an equitable distribution of doses and begin to dent the epidemic in participating countries. The COVAX pillar is for all countries. It will include a fair and equitable allocation of limited supplies on the basis of ethical values and public health goals. Criteria will include population groups with higher risk of mortality, burden of disease, threat, vulnerability, product supply and logistics, country context , and global health security priorities. As further scale-up of production occurs, and the market is considered orderly, countries will have continued allocation of doses as needed, or could revert to bilateral deals where that makes sense for them to do so.
COVAX in numbers
[1IMF estimates, published on April 14https://blogs.imf.org/2020/04/14/the-great-lockdown-worst-economic- downturn-since-the-great-depression/.
Ending the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic as soon as possible will require large up-front capital. Com- mitments from high income and upper middle income countries (HIC, UMIC), are needed (1) to procure ~950 M doses through the COVAX Facility; and (2) to ensure that vaccine can be delivered at the greatest possible speed by underwriting the costs of manufacturing at risk are needed.. $18.1 B is needed to cover these latter costs as well as the costs of procuring and delivering vaccine for low and middle income countries
(LMIC). Such investment will secure the development of, and fair access to, up to two billion doses of vaccine by the end of 2021, assuming a safe and effective vaccine is developed in the near future. Of this total, $11.3 B is needed urgently to cover investments within the next 6 months. This includes ~$2 B in funding for advance market commitments to secure doses for LMICs. It also accounts for an emergency buffer of doses with mixed funding sources.
These numbers are estimates and will become more precise once we get a better idea of, among other factors, the technology that the successful vaccine candidates will be based on, and the number of doses required.
The total funding need of $18.1 B for 2020/2021 is made up of:
- Research & development and manufacturing: Investment in R&D of $2.4 B ($1.5 B urgent need), tech transfer/scale-up and out of $1.7 B ($1.2 B urgent need), at-risk manufacturing of $5.3 B ($5.2 B ur- gent need) are required. ~$4.3 B from at-risk manufacturing is expected to be recovered as inventory value for successful candidates.
- Volume guarantees/procurement: Significant amounts of capital will be required for manufacturer- specific and market-wide volume guarantees and advance procurement for countries of all income levels, including $5.5 B ($2.0 B urgent need for AMC) for immunizing for example healthcare workers and high risk population of LMICs through the Gavi Advance Market Commitment (AMC) and securing an emergency vaccine stockpile of ~200 M doses. In addition, a commitment from HIC and UMIC to procure ~950 M doses through the COVAX Facility is needed. The final cost will depend on the even- tual vaccines that are developed. Payments will only be made once candidates reach licensure or an equivalent regulatory milestone (e.g., recommendation of use). It is necessary to have funding and guarantees in place to protect volumes and encourage manufacturers to scale up and enter multilat- eral deals with the COVAX Facility.
- Delivery costs: ~$3.2 B ($1.4 B urgent need) are needed for in-country delivery to build up supply chain capacity and carry out vaccine campaigns in LIC and LMIC as well as for global coordination and technical assistance. Delivery for UMIC and HIC is expected to be covered by domestic health budgets.
Against the human costs of the pandemic, and the estimated $375 B[1 impact on the global economy every month we delay, the imperative to act now, and to act together, and to act boldly, is clear.
[1IMF estimates, published on April 14https://blogs.imf.org/2020/04/14/the-great-lockdown-worst-economic- downturn-since-the-great-depression/.
Insuring accelerated vaccine development and manufacture
Introduction
Developing a vaccine against COVID-19 is the most pressing challenge of our time. The global pandemic has already caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and disrupted the lives of billions more. As well as reducing the tragic loss of life, introduction of a vaccine will prevent the loss $375 B1 to the global economy every month.
Developing one or more safe and effective vaccines is also one of the most complex challenges of our time. Unlike with past vaccine development, scaling up manufacturing and completion of human trials for vaccine candidates must be done in parallel. Even with accelerated investment in manufacturing, and the completion of trials to ensure vaccine candidates are safe and effective, there is no scenario in which supply over the next 18 months will exceed demand although at today’s anticipated trajectory some vaccine candidates could become available within this time frame.
Governments are answerable to their populations and to their taxpayers, and with so many lives and livelihoods at stake some are understandably pursuing bilateral deals with manufacturers to secure access to scarce future vaccine supplies. As treasuries around the world seek to address unprecedented revenue shocks, such strategies bring hope and instill confidence. But they also bring risk. In normal times, vaccine development is long, complicated, and more often than not ends in failure; it is difficult to know which deals will actually result in getting any vaccine.
Many leaders have called for a global solution to address a global issue and for a shared endeavor that involves the best shared science to resolve in the shortest possible time a pandemic involving every region and territory on the planet. The COVAX Pillar provides this solution: through portfolio diversification, pooling of financial and scientific resources, and economies of scale, participating governments and blocs can hedge the risk of backing unsuccessful candidates just as governments with limited or no ability to finance their own bilateral procurement can be assured access to life-saving vaccines that would otherwise have been beyond their reach.
The goal of the COVAX Pillar is to end the acute phase of the global pandemic by the end of 2021. If it succeeds in this goal, through the appropriate allocation of safe and effective doses of vaccines in phases determined by epidemiology and public health to slow and ultimately to stop the pandemic, it could save millions of lives and transform the economic prospects of governments and individuals.
The COVAX Pillar is an urgently needed approach to getting a safe and effective vaccine faster, through financing that shares the risks of development and creates the capacity for manufacturing vaccine doses now, in parallel with clinical development, and before they are shown to work. It will show how participating countries, by buying into a share of many vaccine candidates instead of just a few, will be able to insure themselves against the failure of any individual candidate and secure successful vaccines in a cost-effective, targeted way.
COVAX: The Context
When a successful vaccine is found, worldwide demand will be in the billions of doses to address the epidemiologic needs. But initial supply will inevitably be limited. The current best-case estimate is that no more than a few hundred million doses will be available by December 2020 in the current environment, scaling to a cumulative 2 billion doses by end 2021.
1 IMF estimates, published on April 14 The Great Lockdown: Worst Economic Downturn Since the Great Depression downturn-since-the-great-depression/
It is difficult to predict which vaccine(s) will be successful. Indeed, the vast majority of vaccines in early development fail. The probability of success for a vaccine in early stage development is less than 20% prior to Phase 2 clinical trial.
This means that the best chance of success for any country is to diversify and access a broad portfolio of vaccine candidates. This increases the chances of success and allows the vaccines that are successful to be shared. Such an approach would enable every country to gain access to a much broader array of vaccines than they would otherwise have through multiple bilateral agreements with individual manufacturers. For countries with local development or manufacturing capacity, this ‘portfolio approach’ insures countries against the risk of their own candidates proving unsuccessful or less effective, or that domestic manufacturing capacity is unsuitable, leaving them with no vaccines at all.
Pooling risks not only means a greater chance at shared rewards through access to successful vaccine candidates, it also means lower prices as competition in a non-pooled risks scenario leads to a disorderly market with price gouging as individual buyers seek to outbid each other for limited resources.
Over time, there will be adequate doses available to vaccinate all who need vaccination, assuming a safe and effective vaccine is found, sufficient investment in manufacturing capacity is secured, and adequate market incentives are established for manufacturers. In the meantime, an allocation methodology is required that stratifies and prioritizes risk groups (for example, healthcare workers, elderly, vulnerable groups) for vaccination in such a way to reduce the spread of virus and the impact of the virus on lives, livelihoods, health systems and economies as quickly as possible.
The biggest challenge will be supply of vaccines for the period while supply is scaling up. While massive efforts are underway to establish large production capacity, initial supplies will need to be prioritized. The main allo- cation criteria are based on the most urgent goal of reducing mortality, protecting health systems and policy.
Priority populations will be determined based on the characteristics of the specific vaccine(s) that demonstrate safety and efficacy. Policy recommendations will lay out the priority populations with the first round of vac- cination likely to consider:
- Health care system workers (1% of global population)
- Adults over 65 years old (8% of global population)
- Other high-risk adults with underlying conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, etc. (15%)
COVAX: The ACT-Accelerator Vaccines pillar
The ACT-Accelerator is a global collaboration to accelerate the development, production and equitable access to new COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. It is a partnership of key stakeholders – political leaders, public and private sector partners, civil society, academia – that leverages each partner’s strengths to drive towards accelerated and equitable access.
Within the ACT-Accelerator, COVAX, the vaccines pillar, is driving the work on vaccine development, manufacturing, procurement and delivery at scale, as well as policy and allocation, bringing it together into the type of agreement described above. It leverages the expertise of existing organisations (CEPI, Gavi and WHO) and industry partners in a new way to meet the challenge of a pandemic.
The COVAX Pillar also ensures that the required additional activities for the successful launch of vaccine are supported in parallel – including detailed demand and supply scenarios, the regulatory dialogue to avoid time lags, the setup of an allocation framework and mechanism and supporting the buildup of infrastructure and health systems preparedness.
A fully financed COVAX pillar could give all participating governments a guaranteed share of any future successful vaccine production.
The COVAX pillar will simultaneously address both pull financing (advance market commitments), and push financing (at-risk investments for R&D, manufacturing capacity reservation & inventory), and agree to do so now to drive investment at high speed, volume, and ‘at risk’, and to secure manufacturing inventory build-up and future supply. By combining the power and expertise of CEPI’s R&D role on the push side with Gavi’s procurement and allocation function on the pull side, the COVAX pillar is able to ensure the manufacturing of doses now, something neither organisation, government or financier could achieve entirely on its own. Supported by the World Health Organization in assuring effective regulation and optimal allocation, both CEPI and Gavi will use the depth and breadth of their partnerships with governments, private sector, academia, civil society, and financiers to achieve the accelerated impact the world needs from the COVAX pillar.
Why we need to act now
1. Mitigate economic damage – for every month that this pandemic continues, $375 billion[1 is lost from
the global economy. Acting now to accelerate development, manufacture, and distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine will save hundreds of thousands of lives and protect the livelihoods of millions more.
2. Accelerate availability of vaccine – if we follow the traditional course of vaccine development, we could face years of delay. Such a delay will cost lives and trillions of dollars in economic damage. CO- VAX will enable at-risk investments in production capacity across several candidates now – to ensure that, upon regulatory approval, doses can be made immediately available at scale.
3. Ensure globally fair allocation and access for low and middle income countries (LMIC) - nobody is safe from COVID-19 until everybody is safe. COVAX not only represents the best solution to end this pandemic, it is also the fairest way to allocate vaccine for all countries to ensure that access can be provided for every country.
The COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility
When sufficiently capitalized, the COVAX pillar will immediately offer advance purchase agreements to vaccine candidates meeting technical threshold criteria. This will be done to produce vaccines at risk before we have results of efficacy trials. Offering between five to ten such contracts will allow a specially created financial instrument, the COVAX Facility, which sits within the pillar, to:
a) procure cumulative 2 billion doses by end 2021, ensuring that participating countries receive allocations of vaccine as quickly as possible including an emergency buffer (10% of doses)
b) procure the highest possible volume of vaccine from each manufacturer, resulting in the greatest number of doses at the most economically efficient price
c) provide for globally fair and equitable allocation of vaccine, saving millions of lives, and protecting millions more livelihoods, and bringing the acute phase of the pandemic to an end in the most efficient fashion possible.
Initial capitalization would provide an equitable distribution of doses and begin to dent the epidemic in participating countries. The COVAX pillar is for all countries. It will include a fair and equitable allocation of limited supplies on the basis of ethical values and public health goals. Criteria will include population groups with higher risk of mortality, burden of disease, threat, vulnerability, product supply and logistics, country context , and global health security priorities. As further scale-up of production occurs, and the market is considered orderly, countries will have continued allocation of doses as needed, or could revert to bilateral deals where that makes sense for them to do so.
COVAX in numbers
[1IMF estimates, published on April 14https://blogs.imf.org/2020/04/14/the-great-lockdown-worst-economic- downturn-since-the-great-depression/.
Ending the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic as soon as possible will require large up-front capital. Com- mitments from high income and upper middle income countries (HIC, UMIC), are needed (1) to procure ~950 M doses through the COVAX Facility; and (2) to ensure that vaccine can be delivered at the greatest possible speed by underwriting the costs of manufacturing at risk are needed.. $18.1 B is needed to cover these latter costs as well as the costs of procuring and delivering vaccine for low and middle income countries
(LMIC). Such investment will secure the development of, and fair access to, up to two billion doses of vaccine by the end of 2021, assuming a safe and effective vaccine is developed in the near future. Of this total, $11.3 B is needed urgently to cover investments within the next 6 months. This includes ~$2 B in funding for advance market commitments to secure doses for LMICs. It also accounts for an emergency buffer of doses with mixed funding sources.
These numbers are estimates and will become more precise once we get a better idea of, among other factors, the technology that the successful vaccine candidates will be based on, and the number of doses required.
The total funding need of $18.1 B for 2020/2021 is made up of:
- Research & development and manufacturing: Investment in R&D of $2.4 B ($1.5 B urgent need), tech transfer/scale-up and out of $1.7 B ($1.2 B urgent need), at-risk manufacturing of $5.3 B ($5.2 B ur- gent need) are required. ~$4.3 B from at-risk manufacturing is expected to be recovered as inventory value for successful candidates.
- Volume guarantees/procurement: Significant amounts of capital will be required for manufacturer- specific and market-wide volume guarantees and advance procurement for countries of all income levels, including $5.5 B ($2.0 B urgent need for AMC) for immunizing for example healthcare workers and high risk population of LMICs through the Gavi Advance Market Commitment (AMC) and securing an emergency vaccine stockpile of ~200 M doses. In addition, a commitment from HIC and UMIC to procure ~950 M doses through the COVAX Facility is needed. The final cost will depend on the even- tual vaccines that are developed. Payments will only be made once candidates reach licensure or an equivalent regulatory milestone (e.g., recommendation of use). It is necessary to have funding and guarantees in place to protect volumes and encourage manufacturers to scale up and enter multilat- eral deals with the COVAX Facility.
- Delivery costs: ~$3.2 B ($1.4 B urgent need) are needed for in-country delivery to build up supply chain capacity and carry out vaccine campaigns in LIC and LMIC as well as for global coordination and technical assistance. Delivery for UMIC and HIC is expected to be covered by domestic health budgets.
Against the human costs of the pandemic, and the estimated $375 B[1 impact on the global economy every month we delay, the imperative to act now, and to act together, and to act boldly, is clear.
[1IMF estimates, published on April 14https://blogs.imf.org/2020/04/14/the-great-lockdown-worst-economic- downturn-since-the-great-depression/.
margarita25
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WHO Press Briefing
June 29, 2020
Press briefings
Part 1 Transcript / source
Dr. Tedros: (01:22)
Thank you. Thank you, Tarek. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Tomorrow marks six months since WHO received the first reports of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in China. The six month anniversary of the outbreak coincides with reaching 10 million cases and 500,000 deaths. This is a moment for all of us to reflect on the progress we have made and the lessons we have learned, and to recommit ourselves to doing everything we can to save lives. Six months ago, none of us could have imagined how our world and our lives would be thrown into turmoil by this new virus. The pandemic has brought out the best and the worst of humanity. All over the world, we have seen heartwarming acts of resilience, inventiveness, solidarity, and kindness. But we have also seen concerning signs of stigma, misinformation, and the politicization of the pandemic.
Dr. Tedros: (02:55)
For the past six months, WHO and our partners have worked relentlessly to support all countries to prepare for and respond to this new virus. Today, we are publishing an updated and detailed timeline of WHO’s response to the pandemic on our website so the public can have a look on what happened in the past six months in relation to the response. It illustrates the range of WHO’s work to stop transmission and save lives. We have worked with researchers, clinicians, and other experts to bring together the evolving science and distill it into guidance. Millions of health workers have enrolled in courses through our openwho.org online learning platform. We launched the Solidarity Trial to find answers fast to which drugs are the most effective. We launched the Solidarity flights to ship millions of test kits and tons of personal protective equipment to many countries. We launched the Solidarity Response Fund, which has raised more than $223 million for the response. Three major innovative Solidarity activities. And we have worked with the European Commission and multiple partners to launch the ACT Accelerator to ensure that once a vaccine is available, it’s available to everyone, especially those who are at greatest risk. Last Friday, we launched the ACT Accelerator Investment Case, which estimates that more than $31 billion will be needed to accelerate the development, equitable allocation, and delivery of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics by the end of next year. Over the weekend, WHO was proud to partner in the Global Goal: Unite for our Future, pledging conference, organized by the European Commission and Global Citizen. The event mobilized new resources to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic globally, including in support of the ACT Accelerator.
Dr. Tedros: (05:37)
Also, a vaccine will be an important long term tool for controlling COVID-19. There are five priorities that every single country must focus on now to save lives now. First, empower communities. Every individual must understand that they are not helpless. There are things everyone should do to protect themselves and others. Your health is in your hands. That includes physical distancing, hand hygiene, covering coughs, staying home if you feel sick, wearing masks when appropriate, and only sharing information from reliable sources. You may be in low risk category, but the choices you make could be the difference between life and death for someone else.
Dr. Tedros: (06:44)
Second, suppress transmission. Whether countries have no cases, clusters of cases, or community transmission, there are steps all countries can take to suppress the spread of the virus. Ensure that health workers have access to training and personal protective equipment, improve surveillance to find cases. The single most important intervention for breaking chains of transmission is not necessarily high tech and can be carried out by a broad range of professionals. It’s tracing and quarantine contacts. Many countries actually have used non-health professionals to do contact tracing.
Dr. Tedros: (07:39)
Third, save lives. Early identification and clinical care saves lives. Providing oxygen and dexamethasone to people with severe and critical disease saves lives. And paying special attention to high risk groups, including elderly people in long term care facilities, saves lives. Japan has done this. It has one of the highest population of elderly people, but its death rate is low. And the reason is what we just said. Many countries can do that. They can save lives. Fourth, accelerate research. We have already learned a lot about this virus, but there is still a lot we don’t know. And there are still tools we need. This week, we will convene a second meeting to assess progress on research and development and reevaluate research priorities for the next stage of the pandemic. And fifth, political leadership. As we have said repeatedly, national unity and global solidarity are essential to implementing a comprehensive strategy to suppress transmission, save lives, and minimize the social and economic impact of the virus. No matter what stage a country is at, these five priorities, if acted on consistently and coherently, can turn the tide.
Dr. Tedros: (09:36)
WHO will continue to do everything in our power to serve countries with science, solidarity, and solutions. The critical question that all countries will face in the coming months is how to live with this virus. That is the new normal. Many countries have implemented unprecedented measures to suppress transmission and save lives. These measures have been successful in slowing the spread of the virus, but they have not completely stopped it. Some countries are now experiencing a resurgence of cases as they start to reopen their economies and societies. Most people remain susceptible. The virus still has a lot of room to move. 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. Although many countries have made some progress, globally, the pandemic is actually speeding up.
Dr. Tedros: (11:16)
We’re all in this together. And we’re all in this for the long haul. We will need even greater stores of resilience, patience, humility, and generosity in the months ahead. We have already lost so much, but we can not lose hope. This is a time for renewing our commitment to empowering communities, suppressing transmission, saving lives, accelerating research, and political and moral leadership. But it’s also a time for all countries to renew their commitment to universal health coverage, at the cornerstone of social and economic development and to building the safer, fairer, greener, more inclusive world we all want. I thank you.
Tarik: (12:29)
Thank you, Dr. Tedros, for these opening remarks marking the six months of pandemic. We will now open the floor to questions. Reminding, once again, journalists that if they wish, they can ask question in six UN languages and Portuguese. So if we are ready from the technical side, we will go first to Georgia, Georgian News Agency. And we have with us Constantine [inaudible 00:00:13:00]. If you hear us, Constantine, please go ahead.
Constantine: (13:04)
Yes, yes, yes. Constantine [inaudible 00:00:13:09]. My press, Georgia. Thank you very much. My question is for Georgia is a country with small economy, but at the same time, we had good results of fighting the coronavirus. What will be the mechanism to get access to the vaccine that will be developed, I hope, with the support of the World Health Organization? Are there any other possibilities to achieve so-called health immunity besides vaccination? Thank you very much.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (13:46)
Good afternoon. We all hope, as you do, that we can reach a point where a safe and effective vaccine is developed and allocated fairly to countries around the world. As the Director-General has said in his speech, we don’t have that vaccine yet. And there’s a lot we can do now to suppress transmission. And I believe the Republic of Georgia has been doing well in this regard, both in terms of community engagement, in terms of suppression of transmission, and saving lives through adequate clinical care. But yes, we do hope that a vaccine will be developed. There have been over 133 candidates put into the system. A large number are now in clinical trials. The Director-General launched the ACT Accelerator in April as a means of leveraging global collaboration and innovation and funding, both for vaccines, drugs, and for diagnostics. The vaccines is probably the one that will absorb most resources and requires a very deep sustained public-private partnership.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (14:52)
It is the best means for countries to access the vaccine. And we have to find a way to ensure that regional alliances that are growing to develop contracts with companies for vaccines are linked to a global movement that ensures that those vaccines are made available to all countries. The GAVI, SEPI, and WHO are working together on Covax, the initiative for coronavirus vaccines, as part of that large advanced market commitments that are being put together in order to secure vaccine production.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (15:26)
There is no other means of achieving adequate herd immunity. The herd immunity is a term usually reserved for the use of vaccines. But we also have to be cautious and careful. We desperately hope, and we can see tremendous work towards, safe and effective vaccines. But there are no guarantees of such. And therefore, that’s why we have so many candidates in testing, so we have an opportunity to find the best one. But the only other way that a virus like this may be suppressed is by us breaking the chains of transmission. If you accept that you cannot do that, then the only option is to let this virus run free through society. And we have already seen the horrific impacts of that. And therefore, reducing mortality, suppressing transmission, while waiting for the arrival of a safe and effective vaccine right now is our best strategy for stopping this disease.
Dr. Tedros: (16:35)
Thank you. I just would like to … What my general said, Mike, herd immunity is very difficult even when we have vaccines because we need to have a high coverage of vaccine use to have herd immunity.
Dr. Tedros: (17:03)
… vaccine use to have herd immunity, and Mike had already said it.
Dr. Tedros: (17:09)
To be honest with you, I think it would be important to focus on what is at hand now. What is at hand now is the simple public health solution we have that many countries use to suppress the transmission and to save lives. I will give you one example, which is a country. South Korea. In February, I remember South Korea had the second largest number of cases after China. I spoke with the health minister, and the foreign minister came to Geneva to discuss with us in our headquarters here. We agreed on the comprehensive approach, and we agreed on implementing what’s on hand to save lives, and to suppress the transmission. And South Korea has shown to the world that, without even vaccines or therapeutics, that it can take the number of cases down, and suppress the outbreak.
Dr. Tedros: (18:38)
So our message to the world is if the government can do its best in testing, contact tracing, isolating, quarantining cases like what South Korea did, and if the communities … Not only the government, but in addition to the government, the communities take their responsibility of doing what’s expected of them, starting from hand hygiene to the rest that can be done personally, this virus can be suppressed. Time after time, and country after country, what we have seen is this virus can be suppressed if the governments are serious about the things they have to do, their share, and if the community can do its share.
Dr. Tedros: (19:42)
So while doing our best to find a vaccine, which is the right thing to do, our advice from WHO is we should do everything we can using the tools we have at hand. Because many countries, including the one example, Korea … I can give you a list of countries … Have shown that this virus can be suppressed and controlled using the tools at hand. So the basics are still important, and the basics are non-pharmaceutical. And they have shown their efficiency and effectiveness in controlling or suppressing this virus.
Dr. Tedros: (20:37)
The reason I’m stressing this is the virus is spreading aggressively. It’s very tragic to report to you that we have already surpassed the 10 million cases, and have a million deaths. Still, this could have been prevented through the tools that we have at hand. And, please, focus on the tools at hand. Of course, we appreciate the investment you’re doing in finding more technology, vaccines, and therapeutics, but that should be in addition to the maximum use of the tools at hand. And these are the simple solutions that the government can do and the public can do. And we have already outlined those.
Dr. Tedros: (21:43)
So that’s our message. It’s six months since the virus started. It could be like a broken record, to say exactly the same thing, but the same thing works. Test, trace, isolate, and quarantine cases. That’s for the government to do. And, second, hand hygiene for each individual. Of course, wearing masks, and the other things that can be done, social distancing, at individual level. It works, and save lives. And that’s still our message. But, of course, we should look for vaccines and the rest, but the simple and basic public health works, and that’s what we’re saying. Thank you.
Tarik: (22:45)
Thank you, Dr. Ryan and Dr. Tedros, for this answer. We will now go to Michael [Vulsukiev 00:22:52], who is a contributor to CNN. Michael, the floor is yours.
Michael Vulsukiev: (22:57)
Yes, can you hear me?
Tarik: (22:59)
Yes.
Michael Vulsukiev: (23:00)
Thank you for taking my question. Good morning from British Columbia.
Michael Vulsukiev: (23:04)
Director General, this question relates to your opening statement that the pandemic has brought out the best and worst in humanity, including politicization of the pandemic. Just a few days ago, Marco Rubio [inaudible 00:23:17] were among 500 people who warned in a letter that democracy is under threat by certain authoritarian leaders due to coronavirus. They’ve cited parliaments being sidelined, journalists arrested, minorities scapegoated, and most vulnerable sectors of the population face alarming new dangers. My question is the following, sir. Ambassador William Taylor told me that strong men do not seem to be winning against COVID-19, that the virus is having a devastating effect on strong men who aren’t taking the steps that need to be taken. Do you have an opinion on that, or do you agree? Thank you.
Dr. Tedros: (23:53)
Can you repeat? Sorry, I didn’t know the ambassador that you mentioned.
Michael Vulsukiev: (23:58)
Oh, sorry. It’s Ambassador William Taylor. He is quite well known as a US ambassador. He was in the congressional testimony a few months ago. Served to various places around the world. He’s now with the US Institute of Peace, and studies strong men a lot, and he said that if strong men believed that they could take advantage of COVID-19 to suppress civil liberties, they’re wrong, that this will backfire on them.
Dr. Tedros: (24:25)
Mm-hmm ( affirmative).
Dr. Tedros: (24:34)
Yeah. No, thank you. Our message from the start was very, very simple. I was a politician myself. I was a member of parliament. Maybe something I learned while I was a politician was at the end of the day, what you do should be something that helps your people. And one thing may be I learned the biggest lesson is even if we belong to different political parties, the citizens of that any country, you bring any country, are the same.
Dr. Tedros: (25:38)
So whether we belong to the right or left, or we are the center, but they call progressive party, what matters at the end of the day is what we do good for the people. Then if you take COVID, if you see it in doing good for our citizens, what you do is saving lives. Because even one life is important, whether it belongs to the left, to the right, or to the center. And that’s why from the start we said please, please quarantine COVID politics. Please, we need national unity. Unity at the country level, unity among political parties, unity across ideologies, unity across beliefs, unity across races. Unity across any differences you can imagine, because there was a reason why we said that.
Dr. Tedros: (26:56)
This virus has two dangerous combinations, and we have said it many times, and even the international expert group that visited China that was composed of many countries, including the US, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Korea, Singapore … Many countries, actually. A very diverse … Russia. A very diverse group of international experts said this virus has two dangerous combinations. One is it’s fast, it’s contagious. Second, it’s a killer. And it can exploit divisions. Divisions between us across all the lines which I have said, and that’s why WHO has been saying, please, avoid any division. Any differences could be exploited by the virus, and that we have to fight this virus in unison.
Dr. Tedros: (28:29)
And that’s why whatever what you said, our message is still the same. It’s not about one country, or two countries, or three countries. It’s not about something specific to any place. It’s about how we should operate globally, whether it’s at national level, sub-national level, or regional level, or global level. And with 10 million cases now, and half a million deaths, unless we address the problems we have already identified at WHO, the lack of national unity and lack of global solidarity, and [inaudible 00:29:30] the virus to spread, as I said in my speech, the worst is yet to come.
Dr. Tedros: (29:40)
I’m sorry to say that, but with this kind of environment and condition, we fear the worst. And that’s why we have to bring our acts together, and fight this dangerous virus together. I thank you.
Tarik: (30:06)
Thank you, Dr. Tedros, and thanks to Michael for this question. We will now go to the Economic Times of India, and we have with us [Devia 00:30:20] [Agajagopal 00:30:20]. Devia, you will need to unmute yourself. Hello?
Devia Agajagopal: (30:26)
Hello. Thank you for taking my question. Am I audible?
Tarik: (30:31)
Yes, we can hear you.
Devia Agajagopal: (30:33)
Yes. Hi. I wanted to ask this question to the entire panel. Last week, Anthony Fauci of NIH has said that contact tracing is becoming increasingly difficult at this stage of the pandemic. Do you think that as infection spreads in most countries, it is still possible to use contact tracing as a effective way of mitigation? Thank you.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (30:59)
I think yes, but it’s very dependent on the background intensity of transmission. In situations where there’s very intense community transmission, and large numbers of cases every day, it’s very hard to get on top of case isolation alone, nevermind the contact tracing. So countries may need to make some choices on that regard. But what has happened for those countries who have been effective, those countries who stuck with contact tracing and isolation or quarantine and of contacts, have found then as the number of cases drops, that they can catch up on the contact tracing, and improve.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (31:39)
The difficulty has been for many countries who gave up entirely on contact tracing now having to pick that up, now having to scale up the architecture of public health surveillance as they’ve opened up societies and decreased the public health and social measures on the restrictions of movement. It’s quite tough for the public health system to catch up, and it takes time for it to do so. And the Director General said many, many times during this period of so-called “lockdowns” that this was precious time to prepare. Not only were public health and social measures having an impact on transmission, they were also clearly having a negative impact on social and economic life, and that this precious opportunity needed to be taken.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (32:26)
And we’ve seen in countries who have really beefed up their capacity to do contact tracing, isolation, quarantine, testing, and all of the things the Director General spoke about, they have done well.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (32:38)
So, yes, contact tracing, public health surveillance is a key part of a package of activities. The DG has said it. If individuals and communities can sustain the physical distancing, the hygiene, the mask-wearing, and the other things that are appropriate and advised by local government, if the public health system can continue to track and trace cases, yes, we should see a situation where the disease comes under control. And many countries have proven that. That is not supposition. Many, many countries, through applying a comprehensive strategy, have reached a very low level of virus transmission in their countries. But always have to remain vigilant in case there are clusters or small outbreaks. We’ve seen those situations arise in Germany. We’ve seen those situations arise in Singapore and Japan, in Korea, in China, and other countries.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (33:34)
And, again, it’s in those situations where your public health surveillance and your contact tracing and your ability to investigate clusters really comes into its own. And where you’ve really seen the advantage of public health and public health architecture is that ability to pounce on disease. What you have to do is push the disease down to the lowest possible level, and communities have made a huge sacrifice for that happen. They’ve stayed at home, they’ve stayed away from their families. They’ve contributed tremendously to suppressing-
Dr. Michael Ryan: (34:03)
They’ve contributed tremendously to suppressing infection. And what public health authorities have needed to do is to put in place the right public health surveillance in order to take advantage of that. So as the restrictions are lifted and as we see small clusters appear, the public health authorities can react quickly and suppress that infection again. And a great credit goes to countries like Germany, like Japan, like Korea, and others who’ve really focused in on that function of the system. They’re able to use a multifaceted approach. They’re able to sustain community commitment to the process. High levels of community acceptance, high levels of community compliance, high levels of community understanding linked to a strong public health intervention and a strengthened public health and health system. It works.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (34:53)
It’s not a guarantee of success but what we’ve seen is that countries that apply a comprehensive sustained strategy with their communities on board make progress. There are no guarantees with epidemics, but this right now is the best package of activities that countries have shown again and again can lead to us arriving at a situation where we can live with this virus.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (35:18)
I just want to add two points to what Mike has said. One is that it can be increasingly difficult to apply this comprehensive approach as transmission increases. But it’s not one activity alone. It is not contact tracing alone. It is not case finding alone. It is not physical distancing alone. You’ve heard the Director General, you’ve heard us say this all the time. But it’s worth repeating because there tends to be a focus on a particular intervention but it needs to be all of the above. And with an empowered community, with an engaged community, with listening to the community and having the community listen and adhere to the public health measures that are in place, this can be done. And so it can be increasingly difficult but what we have seen is in countries that have been in an overwhelming situation, they’ve prioritized these activities, these interventions into specific areas within the countries where transmission seems to be the highest intensity, perhaps related to a super spreading event or a particular cluster, and bringing that transmission down from an overwhelming situation to clusters of activity and from clusters of activity to chains of transmission.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (36:26)
And the other point is, is that it can be turned around. Again, many countries are seeing situations where they’re feeling completely overwhelmed, and we have seen many countries demonstrate that you can turn this around. You can bring transmission under control. It is very, very difficult, but again, prioritizing the work, prioritizing interventions to where it’s needed most, bringing situations under control where you can get a quicker gain and then focusing on higher areas of intensity. These approaches in countries need to be administered at the lowest administrative level as possible to bring situations under control to as many places as you can as quickly as you can. But it can be turned around. And we wouldn’t be saying this unless we’ve seen it happen. And unless we’ve seen countries demonstrate this repeatedly in multiple regions across the globe.
Dr. Tedros: (37:18)
Yeah. Thank you. I think this is very important and I would be happy to add my voice to my colleagues, Mike and Ryan, Mike and Maria. Mike and Maria. Mike Ryan, my general is a very humble servant of humanity. And he wouldn’t tell you what the real stories are regarding contact tracing. I know contact tracing is difficult and I agree with you our colleague, our friend who asked this question. And I know and I understand if countries say contact tracing is difficult. But if you want to try difficult, probably add contact tracing the number of cases. You trace with a situation which is dire to your life. Meaning try it in a place like North Kivu in DRC where 20 rebels operate, armed rebels, and where security is not there. Where your own security is precarious. And when Mike Ryan was leading the whole effort, he was in DRC North Kivu for several months. When there was engagement between different warring parties almost every single day.
Dr. Tedros: (39:19)
And when you would do contact tracing of 25,000 a day despite that security situation. He didn’t send me actually, somebody sent me from the front lines, Mike Ryan wearing the helmet bulletproof, and also the jacket bulletproof and going to communities to do contact tracing and the rest, because he had no option. If you can do contact tracing in that condition, risking your life and he’s the most senior person in terms of emergency response, one of the most senior. Doing contact tracing in a stable and peaceful place wherever it is in many countries, should that come as even an issue? I’m just asking. If there is a single failure for many of our countries to really not hunt down this virus is our failure in contact tracing because we have lame excuses saying it’s too many and it’s very difficult to trace because there are too many. Trust me there is no too many even in a war situation.
Dr. Tedros: (41:09)
If contact tracing helps you to win the fight, you do it even risking your life or get about a place where there is peace. The reason I’m saying this is we don’t tell or we don’t talk about the stories of a simple human being like Mike Ryan who would do this in a situation that risked his life. So if you want to know if contact tracing is difficult, then I will send you his picture in his bulletproof helmet and bulletproof jacket because he believed that he had to do everything to stop the Ebola and to show that saving lives actually needs that level of commitment.
Dr. Tedros: (42:18)
So my answer is just brief. I explained and hopefully that you will understand why I said why I will say the simple phrase because I want you to understand the background. Trust me, no excuse for contact tracing. If any country is saying contact tracing is difficult, it is a lame excuse. Thank you.
Tarik: (42:53)
Thank you Dr. Tedros and Dr. Ryan and Maria as well for this detailed answer on question on contact tracing. We will now go to Brussels Times and we have with us some Mose Apelblat. Mose, can you hear us? You just need to press unmute.
Mose Apelblat: (43:23)
I did it now, okay. Hello? All right?
Tarik: (43:26)
Now we can hear you. Yes, we can hear you.
Mose Apelblat: (43:28)
Okay. Thank you very much. My question refers perhaps to lessons learned. The previous question was about contact tracing and as you said it was not much applied perhaps in the beginning because most countries were overwhelmed by the number of infections and that was but a bad excuse for not trying it out. But that brings to questions if you have any lessons learned about the type of contact tracing which should be applied. I’m talking about, I think about the NSA manual contract tracing and digital contact tracing, which also involves questions about privacy.
Mose Apelblat: (44:12)
And that brings me to my overall question, because I remember that there was a World Health Assembly which took place in May I think. And they decided that WHO should at it own choice of timing, perhaps initiate some kind of evaluation of its lessons learned of the response to the Coronavirus. So I would like to ask if it has started or if you think it’s perhaps too early, although already as you said in the beginning, Director General Dr. Tedros said half a year has passed since we got the first report of the outbreak. And the other investigation, which was decided by the Assembly was to find out the zoonotic cause or source of the virus. [inaudible 00:45:11] it more or less but I wonder if [inaudible 00:45:14] or investigation has started. Thank you.
Tarik: (45:19)
That’s lots of question and I did forget to remind everyone as I do usually that we take one question per person but Dr.Ryan will try to help.
Dr. Tedros: (45:29)
I will take the last one. The last one on the zoonotic source, WHO has been saying that knowing the source of the virus is very, very important. Its signs, its public health. We can fight the virus better when we know everything about the virus, including how it started and we will be sending a team next week to China to prepare for that. And we hope that that will lead into understanding how the virus started and what we can do for the future to prepare. So we’re planning to send a team next week. Thank you.
June 29, 2020
Press briefings
Part 1 Transcript / source
Dr. Tedros: (01:22)
Thank you. Thank you, Tarek. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Tomorrow marks six months since WHO received the first reports of a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in China. The six month anniversary of the outbreak coincides with reaching 10 million cases and 500,000 deaths. This is a moment for all of us to reflect on the progress we have made and the lessons we have learned, and to recommit ourselves to doing everything we can to save lives. Six months ago, none of us could have imagined how our world and our lives would be thrown into turmoil by this new virus. The pandemic has brought out the best and the worst of humanity. All over the world, we have seen heartwarming acts of resilience, inventiveness, solidarity, and kindness. But we have also seen concerning signs of stigma, misinformation, and the politicization of the pandemic.
Dr. Tedros: (02:55)
For the past six months, WHO and our partners have worked relentlessly to support all countries to prepare for and respond to this new virus. Today, we are publishing an updated and detailed timeline of WHO’s response to the pandemic on our website so the public can have a look on what happened in the past six months in relation to the response. It illustrates the range of WHO’s work to stop transmission and save lives. We have worked with researchers, clinicians, and other experts to bring together the evolving science and distill it into guidance. Millions of health workers have enrolled in courses through our openwho.org online learning platform. We launched the Solidarity Trial to find answers fast to which drugs are the most effective. We launched the Solidarity flights to ship millions of test kits and tons of personal protective equipment to many countries. We launched the Solidarity Response Fund, which has raised more than $223 million for the response. Three major innovative Solidarity activities. And we have worked with the European Commission and multiple partners to launch the ACT Accelerator to ensure that once a vaccine is available, it’s available to everyone, especially those who are at greatest risk. Last Friday, we launched the ACT Accelerator Investment Case, which estimates that more than $31 billion will be needed to accelerate the development, equitable allocation, and delivery of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics by the end of next year. Over the weekend, WHO was proud to partner in the Global Goal: Unite for our Future, pledging conference, organized by the European Commission and Global Citizen. The event mobilized new resources to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic globally, including in support of the ACT Accelerator.
Dr. Tedros: (05:37)
Also, a vaccine will be an important long term tool for controlling COVID-19. There are five priorities that every single country must focus on now to save lives now. First, empower communities. Every individual must understand that they are not helpless. There are things everyone should do to protect themselves and others. Your health is in your hands. That includes physical distancing, hand hygiene, covering coughs, staying home if you feel sick, wearing masks when appropriate, and only sharing information from reliable sources. You may be in low risk category, but the choices you make could be the difference between life and death for someone else.
Dr. Tedros: (06:44)
Second, suppress transmission. Whether countries have no cases, clusters of cases, or community transmission, there are steps all countries can take to suppress the spread of the virus. Ensure that health workers have access to training and personal protective equipment, improve surveillance to find cases. The single most important intervention for breaking chains of transmission is not necessarily high tech and can be carried out by a broad range of professionals. It’s tracing and quarantine contacts. Many countries actually have used non-health professionals to do contact tracing.
Dr. Tedros: (07:39)
Third, save lives. Early identification and clinical care saves lives. Providing oxygen and dexamethasone to people with severe and critical disease saves lives. And paying special attention to high risk groups, including elderly people in long term care facilities, saves lives. Japan has done this. It has one of the highest population of elderly people, but its death rate is low. And the reason is what we just said. Many countries can do that. They can save lives. Fourth, accelerate research. We have already learned a lot about this virus, but there is still a lot we don’t know. And there are still tools we need. This week, we will convene a second meeting to assess progress on research and development and reevaluate research priorities for the next stage of the pandemic. And fifth, political leadership. As we have said repeatedly, national unity and global solidarity are essential to implementing a comprehensive strategy to suppress transmission, save lives, and minimize the social and economic impact of the virus. No matter what stage a country is at, these five priorities, if acted on consistently and coherently, can turn the tide.
Dr. Tedros: (09:36)
WHO will continue to do everything in our power to serve countries with science, solidarity, and solutions. The critical question that all countries will face in the coming months is how to live with this virus. That is the new normal. Many countries have implemented unprecedented measures to suppress transmission and save lives. These measures have been successful in slowing the spread of the virus, but they have not completely stopped it. Some countries are now experiencing a resurgence of cases as they start to reopen their economies and societies. Most people remain susceptible. The virus still has a lot of room to move. 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. Although many countries have made some progress, globally, the pandemic is actually speeding up.
Dr. Tedros: (11:16)
We’re all in this together. And we’re all in this for the long haul. We will need even greater stores of resilience, patience, humility, and generosity in the months ahead. We have already lost so much, but we can not lose hope. This is a time for renewing our commitment to empowering communities, suppressing transmission, saving lives, accelerating research, and political and moral leadership. But it’s also a time for all countries to renew their commitment to universal health coverage, at the cornerstone of social and economic development and to building the safer, fairer, greener, more inclusive world we all want. I thank you.
Tarik: (12:29)
Thank you, Dr. Tedros, for these opening remarks marking the six months of pandemic. We will now open the floor to questions. Reminding, once again, journalists that if they wish, they can ask question in six UN languages and Portuguese. So if we are ready from the technical side, we will go first to Georgia, Georgian News Agency. And we have with us Constantine [inaudible 00:00:13:00]. If you hear us, Constantine, please go ahead.
Constantine: (13:04)
Yes, yes, yes. Constantine [inaudible 00:00:13:09]. My press, Georgia. Thank you very much. My question is for Georgia is a country with small economy, but at the same time, we had good results of fighting the coronavirus. What will be the mechanism to get access to the vaccine that will be developed, I hope, with the support of the World Health Organization? Are there any other possibilities to achieve so-called health immunity besides vaccination? Thank you very much.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (13:46)
Good afternoon. We all hope, as you do, that we can reach a point where a safe and effective vaccine is developed and allocated fairly to countries around the world. As the Director-General has said in his speech, we don’t have that vaccine yet. And there’s a lot we can do now to suppress transmission. And I believe the Republic of Georgia has been doing well in this regard, both in terms of community engagement, in terms of suppression of transmission, and saving lives through adequate clinical care. But yes, we do hope that a vaccine will be developed. There have been over 133 candidates put into the system. A large number are now in clinical trials. The Director-General launched the ACT Accelerator in April as a means of leveraging global collaboration and innovation and funding, both for vaccines, drugs, and for diagnostics. The vaccines is probably the one that will absorb most resources and requires a very deep sustained public-private partnership.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (14:52)
It is the best means for countries to access the vaccine. And we have to find a way to ensure that regional alliances that are growing to develop contracts with companies for vaccines are linked to a global movement that ensures that those vaccines are made available to all countries. The GAVI, SEPI, and WHO are working together on Covax, the initiative for coronavirus vaccines, as part of that large advanced market commitments that are being put together in order to secure vaccine production.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (15:26)
There is no other means of achieving adequate herd immunity. The herd immunity is a term usually reserved for the use of vaccines. But we also have to be cautious and careful. We desperately hope, and we can see tremendous work towards, safe and effective vaccines. But there are no guarantees of such. And therefore, that’s why we have so many candidates in testing, so we have an opportunity to find the best one. But the only other way that a virus like this may be suppressed is by us breaking the chains of transmission. If you accept that you cannot do that, then the only option is to let this virus run free through society. And we have already seen the horrific impacts of that. And therefore, reducing mortality, suppressing transmission, while waiting for the arrival of a safe and effective vaccine right now is our best strategy for stopping this disease.
Dr. Tedros: (16:35)
Thank you. I just would like to … What my general said, Mike, herd immunity is very difficult even when we have vaccines because we need to have a high coverage of vaccine use to have herd immunity.
Dr. Tedros: (17:03)
… vaccine use to have herd immunity, and Mike had already said it.
Dr. Tedros: (17:09)
To be honest with you, I think it would be important to focus on what is at hand now. What is at hand now is the simple public health solution we have that many countries use to suppress the transmission and to save lives. I will give you one example, which is a country. South Korea. In February, I remember South Korea had the second largest number of cases after China. I spoke with the health minister, and the foreign minister came to Geneva to discuss with us in our headquarters here. We agreed on the comprehensive approach, and we agreed on implementing what’s on hand to save lives, and to suppress the transmission. And South Korea has shown to the world that, without even vaccines or therapeutics, that it can take the number of cases down, and suppress the outbreak.
Dr. Tedros: (18:38)
So our message to the world is if the government can do its best in testing, contact tracing, isolating, quarantining cases like what South Korea did, and if the communities … Not only the government, but in addition to the government, the communities take their responsibility of doing what’s expected of them, starting from hand hygiene to the rest that can be done personally, this virus can be suppressed. Time after time, and country after country, what we have seen is this virus can be suppressed if the governments are serious about the things they have to do, their share, and if the community can do its share.
Dr. Tedros: (19:42)
So while doing our best to find a vaccine, which is the right thing to do, our advice from WHO is we should do everything we can using the tools we have at hand. Because many countries, including the one example, Korea … I can give you a list of countries … Have shown that this virus can be suppressed and controlled using the tools at hand. So the basics are still important, and the basics are non-pharmaceutical. And they have shown their efficiency and effectiveness in controlling or suppressing this virus.
Dr. Tedros: (20:37)
The reason I’m stressing this is the virus is spreading aggressively. It’s very tragic to report to you that we have already surpassed the 10 million cases, and have a million deaths. Still, this could have been prevented through the tools that we have at hand. And, please, focus on the tools at hand. Of course, we appreciate the investment you’re doing in finding more technology, vaccines, and therapeutics, but that should be in addition to the maximum use of the tools at hand. And these are the simple solutions that the government can do and the public can do. And we have already outlined those.
Dr. Tedros: (21:43)
So that’s our message. It’s six months since the virus started. It could be like a broken record, to say exactly the same thing, but the same thing works. Test, trace, isolate, and quarantine cases. That’s for the government to do. And, second, hand hygiene for each individual. Of course, wearing masks, and the other things that can be done, social distancing, at individual level. It works, and save lives. And that’s still our message. But, of course, we should look for vaccines and the rest, but the simple and basic public health works, and that’s what we’re saying. Thank you.
Tarik: (22:45)
Thank you, Dr. Ryan and Dr. Tedros, for this answer. We will now go to Michael [Vulsukiev 00:22:52], who is a contributor to CNN. Michael, the floor is yours.
Michael Vulsukiev: (22:57)
Yes, can you hear me?
Tarik: (22:59)
Yes.
Michael Vulsukiev: (23:00)
Thank you for taking my question. Good morning from British Columbia.
Michael Vulsukiev: (23:04)
Director General, this question relates to your opening statement that the pandemic has brought out the best and worst in humanity, including politicization of the pandemic. Just a few days ago, Marco Rubio [inaudible 00:23:17] were among 500 people who warned in a letter that democracy is under threat by certain authoritarian leaders due to coronavirus. They’ve cited parliaments being sidelined, journalists arrested, minorities scapegoated, and most vulnerable sectors of the population face alarming new dangers. My question is the following, sir. Ambassador William Taylor told me that strong men do not seem to be winning against COVID-19, that the virus is having a devastating effect on strong men who aren’t taking the steps that need to be taken. Do you have an opinion on that, or do you agree? Thank you.
Dr. Tedros: (23:53)
Can you repeat? Sorry, I didn’t know the ambassador that you mentioned.
Michael Vulsukiev: (23:58)
Oh, sorry. It’s Ambassador William Taylor. He is quite well known as a US ambassador. He was in the congressional testimony a few months ago. Served to various places around the world. He’s now with the US Institute of Peace, and studies strong men a lot, and he said that if strong men believed that they could take advantage of COVID-19 to suppress civil liberties, they’re wrong, that this will backfire on them.
Dr. Tedros: (24:25)
Mm-hmm ( affirmative).
Dr. Tedros: (24:34)
Yeah. No, thank you. Our message from the start was very, very simple. I was a politician myself. I was a member of parliament. Maybe something I learned while I was a politician was at the end of the day, what you do should be something that helps your people. And one thing may be I learned the biggest lesson is even if we belong to different political parties, the citizens of that any country, you bring any country, are the same.
Dr. Tedros: (25:38)
So whether we belong to the right or left, or we are the center, but they call progressive party, what matters at the end of the day is what we do good for the people. Then if you take COVID, if you see it in doing good for our citizens, what you do is saving lives. Because even one life is important, whether it belongs to the left, to the right, or to the center. And that’s why from the start we said please, please quarantine COVID politics. Please, we need national unity. Unity at the country level, unity among political parties, unity across ideologies, unity across beliefs, unity across races. Unity across any differences you can imagine, because there was a reason why we said that.
Dr. Tedros: (26:56)
This virus has two dangerous combinations, and we have said it many times, and even the international expert group that visited China that was composed of many countries, including the US, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Korea, Singapore … Many countries, actually. A very diverse … Russia. A very diverse group of international experts said this virus has two dangerous combinations. One is it’s fast, it’s contagious. Second, it’s a killer. And it can exploit divisions. Divisions between us across all the lines which I have said, and that’s why WHO has been saying, please, avoid any division. Any differences could be exploited by the virus, and that we have to fight this virus in unison.
Dr. Tedros: (28:29)
And that’s why whatever what you said, our message is still the same. It’s not about one country, or two countries, or three countries. It’s not about something specific to any place. It’s about how we should operate globally, whether it’s at national level, sub-national level, or regional level, or global level. And with 10 million cases now, and half a million deaths, unless we address the problems we have already identified at WHO, the lack of national unity and lack of global solidarity, and [inaudible 00:29:30] the virus to spread, as I said in my speech, the worst is yet to come.
Dr. Tedros: (29:40)
I’m sorry to say that, but with this kind of environment and condition, we fear the worst. And that’s why we have to bring our acts together, and fight this dangerous virus together. I thank you.
Tarik: (30:06)
Thank you, Dr. Tedros, and thanks to Michael for this question. We will now go to the Economic Times of India, and we have with us [Devia 00:30:20] [Agajagopal 00:30:20]. Devia, you will need to unmute yourself. Hello?
Devia Agajagopal: (30:26)
Hello. Thank you for taking my question. Am I audible?
Tarik: (30:31)
Yes, we can hear you.
Devia Agajagopal: (30:33)
Yes. Hi. I wanted to ask this question to the entire panel. Last week, Anthony Fauci of NIH has said that contact tracing is becoming increasingly difficult at this stage of the pandemic. Do you think that as infection spreads in most countries, it is still possible to use contact tracing as a effective way of mitigation? Thank you.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (30:59)
I think yes, but it’s very dependent on the background intensity of transmission. In situations where there’s very intense community transmission, and large numbers of cases every day, it’s very hard to get on top of case isolation alone, nevermind the contact tracing. So countries may need to make some choices on that regard. But what has happened for those countries who have been effective, those countries who stuck with contact tracing and isolation or quarantine and of contacts, have found then as the number of cases drops, that they can catch up on the contact tracing, and improve.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (31:39)
The difficulty has been for many countries who gave up entirely on contact tracing now having to pick that up, now having to scale up the architecture of public health surveillance as they’ve opened up societies and decreased the public health and social measures on the restrictions of movement. It’s quite tough for the public health system to catch up, and it takes time for it to do so. And the Director General said many, many times during this period of so-called “lockdowns” that this was precious time to prepare. Not only were public health and social measures having an impact on transmission, they were also clearly having a negative impact on social and economic life, and that this precious opportunity needed to be taken.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (32:26)
And we’ve seen in countries who have really beefed up their capacity to do contact tracing, isolation, quarantine, testing, and all of the things the Director General spoke about, they have done well.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (32:38)
So, yes, contact tracing, public health surveillance is a key part of a package of activities. The DG has said it. If individuals and communities can sustain the physical distancing, the hygiene, the mask-wearing, and the other things that are appropriate and advised by local government, if the public health system can continue to track and trace cases, yes, we should see a situation where the disease comes under control. And many countries have proven that. That is not supposition. Many, many countries, through applying a comprehensive strategy, have reached a very low level of virus transmission in their countries. But always have to remain vigilant in case there are clusters or small outbreaks. We’ve seen those situations arise in Germany. We’ve seen those situations arise in Singapore and Japan, in Korea, in China, and other countries.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (33:34)
And, again, it’s in those situations where your public health surveillance and your contact tracing and your ability to investigate clusters really comes into its own. And where you’ve really seen the advantage of public health and public health architecture is that ability to pounce on disease. What you have to do is push the disease down to the lowest possible level, and communities have made a huge sacrifice for that happen. They’ve stayed at home, they’ve stayed away from their families. They’ve contributed tremendously to suppressing-
Dr. Michael Ryan: (34:03)
They’ve contributed tremendously to suppressing infection. And what public health authorities have needed to do is to put in place the right public health surveillance in order to take advantage of that. So as the restrictions are lifted and as we see small clusters appear, the public health authorities can react quickly and suppress that infection again. And a great credit goes to countries like Germany, like Japan, like Korea, and others who’ve really focused in on that function of the system. They’re able to use a multifaceted approach. They’re able to sustain community commitment to the process. High levels of community acceptance, high levels of community compliance, high levels of community understanding linked to a strong public health intervention and a strengthened public health and health system. It works.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (34:53)
It’s not a guarantee of success but what we’ve seen is that countries that apply a comprehensive sustained strategy with their communities on board make progress. There are no guarantees with epidemics, but this right now is the best package of activities that countries have shown again and again can lead to us arriving at a situation where we can live with this virus.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (35:18)
I just want to add two points to what Mike has said. One is that it can be increasingly difficult to apply this comprehensive approach as transmission increases. But it’s not one activity alone. It is not contact tracing alone. It is not case finding alone. It is not physical distancing alone. You’ve heard the Director General, you’ve heard us say this all the time. But it’s worth repeating because there tends to be a focus on a particular intervention but it needs to be all of the above. And with an empowered community, with an engaged community, with listening to the community and having the community listen and adhere to the public health measures that are in place, this can be done. And so it can be increasingly difficult but what we have seen is in countries that have been in an overwhelming situation, they’ve prioritized these activities, these interventions into specific areas within the countries where transmission seems to be the highest intensity, perhaps related to a super spreading event or a particular cluster, and bringing that transmission down from an overwhelming situation to clusters of activity and from clusters of activity to chains of transmission.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (36:26)
And the other point is, is that it can be turned around. Again, many countries are seeing situations where they’re feeling completely overwhelmed, and we have seen many countries demonstrate that you can turn this around. You can bring transmission under control. It is very, very difficult, but again, prioritizing the work, prioritizing interventions to where it’s needed most, bringing situations under control where you can get a quicker gain and then focusing on higher areas of intensity. These approaches in countries need to be administered at the lowest administrative level as possible to bring situations under control to as many places as you can as quickly as you can. But it can be turned around. And we wouldn’t be saying this unless we’ve seen it happen. And unless we’ve seen countries demonstrate this repeatedly in multiple regions across the globe.
Dr. Tedros: (37:18)
Yeah. Thank you. I think this is very important and I would be happy to add my voice to my colleagues, Mike and Ryan, Mike and Maria. Mike and Maria. Mike Ryan, my general is a very humble servant of humanity. And he wouldn’t tell you what the real stories are regarding contact tracing. I know contact tracing is difficult and I agree with you our colleague, our friend who asked this question. And I know and I understand if countries say contact tracing is difficult. But if you want to try difficult, probably add contact tracing the number of cases. You trace with a situation which is dire to your life. Meaning try it in a place like North Kivu in DRC where 20 rebels operate, armed rebels, and where security is not there. Where your own security is precarious. And when Mike Ryan was leading the whole effort, he was in DRC North Kivu for several months. When there was engagement between different warring parties almost every single day.
Dr. Tedros: (39:19)
And when you would do contact tracing of 25,000 a day despite that security situation. He didn’t send me actually, somebody sent me from the front lines, Mike Ryan wearing the helmet bulletproof, and also the jacket bulletproof and going to communities to do contact tracing and the rest, because he had no option. If you can do contact tracing in that condition, risking your life and he’s the most senior person in terms of emergency response, one of the most senior. Doing contact tracing in a stable and peaceful place wherever it is in many countries, should that come as even an issue? I’m just asking. If there is a single failure for many of our countries to really not hunt down this virus is our failure in contact tracing because we have lame excuses saying it’s too many and it’s very difficult to trace because there are too many. Trust me there is no too many even in a war situation.
Dr. Tedros: (41:09)
If contact tracing helps you to win the fight, you do it even risking your life or get about a place where there is peace. The reason I’m saying this is we don’t tell or we don’t talk about the stories of a simple human being like Mike Ryan who would do this in a situation that risked his life. So if you want to know if contact tracing is difficult, then I will send you his picture in his bulletproof helmet and bulletproof jacket because he believed that he had to do everything to stop the Ebola and to show that saving lives actually needs that level of commitment.
Dr. Tedros: (42:18)
So my answer is just brief. I explained and hopefully that you will understand why I said why I will say the simple phrase because I want you to understand the background. Trust me, no excuse for contact tracing. If any country is saying contact tracing is difficult, it is a lame excuse. Thank you.
Tarik: (42:53)
Thank you Dr. Tedros and Dr. Ryan and Maria as well for this detailed answer on question on contact tracing. We will now go to Brussels Times and we have with us some Mose Apelblat. Mose, can you hear us? You just need to press unmute.
Mose Apelblat: (43:23)
I did it now, okay. Hello? All right?
Tarik: (43:26)
Now we can hear you. Yes, we can hear you.
Mose Apelblat: (43:28)
Okay. Thank you very much. My question refers perhaps to lessons learned. The previous question was about contact tracing and as you said it was not much applied perhaps in the beginning because most countries were overwhelmed by the number of infections and that was but a bad excuse for not trying it out. But that brings to questions if you have any lessons learned about the type of contact tracing which should be applied. I’m talking about, I think about the NSA manual contract tracing and digital contact tracing, which also involves questions about privacy.
Mose Apelblat: (44:12)
And that brings me to my overall question, because I remember that there was a World Health Assembly which took place in May I think. And they decided that WHO should at it own choice of timing, perhaps initiate some kind of evaluation of its lessons learned of the response to the Coronavirus. So I would like to ask if it has started or if you think it’s perhaps too early, although already as you said in the beginning, Director General Dr. Tedros said half a year has passed since we got the first report of the outbreak. And the other investigation, which was decided by the Assembly was to find out the zoonotic cause or source of the virus. [inaudible 00:45:11] it more or less but I wonder if [inaudible 00:45:14] or investigation has started. Thank you.
Tarik: (45:19)
That’s lots of question and I did forget to remind everyone as I do usually that we take one question per person but Dr.Ryan will try to help.
Dr. Tedros: (45:29)
I will take the last one. The last one on the zoonotic source, WHO has been saying that knowing the source of the virus is very, very important. Its signs, its public health. We can fight the virus better when we know everything about the virus, including how it started and we will be sending a team next week to China to prepare for that. And we hope that that will lead into understanding how the virus started and what we can do for the future to prepare. So we’re planning to send a team next week. Thank you.
Last edited:
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WHO Press Briefing
June 29, 2020
Press briefings
Part 2 Transcript/ Continued from above / source:
Dr. Michael Ryan: (46:31)
Okay. I think and if we listened to interviews and others done by people who’ve led contact tracing in places like Singapore, in Japan, and in other countries, the primary success of contact racing has come from a well-organized human workforce. [inaudible 00:46:53] number one. Once a case is detected, once there’s a positive sample in the lab. Maybe it’s from the emergency room, from the hospital, from the community, that there’s an instant response where a case or their family can be interviewed, that contacts are identified quickly. And in that sense, the highest risk context, you can have a contact list that’s 10, and you can have a contact list that’s 10,000 people. And you have to decide how far and how deep you go with listing potential contacts. They all have to be contacted and followed up. Of those who are followed up, you’re asking in most countries’ situations, you’re asking for those contacts to be self-isolated or quarantined at home and some situations people are asked to quarantine in a facility.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (47:38)
So it’s a very complex set of investigations and then communication between different groups. And one group has to hand off the process to another group. So it’s a complex interaction of public health activities. Now obviously when you’re moving information around, the lab has to inform the contact tracers and the contact tracers have to inform the people organizing quarantine. All of those require a lot of transfer of information. And there are a number of digital tools that have really helped with that process. Like the system developed by WHO Go.Data, which has been implemented in a number of countries. And that allows public health authorities to integrate data from different sources within the system. There’s no privacy issues there because that’s really about being more efficient with publicly held data.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (48:24)
There are then other applications that have been developed, which allow for mobility tracking or identifying potentially other high risk contacts. Bluetooth enabled apps that allow that to happen. And some countries have implemented apps like that. And those apps can be a useful in identifying contacts who may not have otherwise been listed and in some way it’s also for looking at overall population risk for transmission. Some have worked, some have not, some have been very well accepted at community level, some have raised real issues regarding data protection, and human rights and other issues. So it’s important that we continue to innovate with these tools but it’s also important to recognize that that aspect of the digital revolution is innovating and providing potential solutions and tools. The core process is still a core human-driven process. It’s about humans contacting humans and asking questions about potential exposures and following up with other human beings.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (49:33)
This is not an automated process. It cannot be automated in that regard. And I think that’s where most countries have struggled. It’s one thing to develop an app. It’s another thing to identify and train a human workforce that can go out and be disease detectives. And you’ll see that in most countries who’ve been successful, what they’ve really managed to do is train community-based people who know their localities, they’ve trained them in how to do contact tracing, they’ve trained them on how to follow up within their own communities. And that’s much better accepted. And we found the same in Ebola in Congo. If you bring contact tracers into small villages where people are outsiders, it’s a potential flash point. So the more localized the responses, the better. And localization of public health intervention is a very important concept. And it’s something that governments need to address. So I think that would be my advice.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (50:27)
Localize contact tracing, bring it down to the lowest level, have it as much as possible based in and done by the community and enhance the efficiency of that where you can, with digital systems and applications as appropriate. But they’re not in themselves the answer. With regard to your second question regarding what we learned, we’re learning a lot. And interestingly, when we talk about contact tracing, we had a major meeting two weeks ago from experts from all over the world who’ve been implementing contact tracing. Today we have a meeting of the Steering Committee of GOARN which is considering the outcomes of that meeting.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (51:03)
… of the steering committee of GOARN, which is considering the outcomes of that meeting. I think tomorrow we begin a meeting on what we’ve learned in research over the last six months in the next few days. Right now at this six-month period, we’ve been doing ourselves internally, a number of internal retreats, looking at what we’ve learned over the last six months. Our program, the Emergencies Programme here is under the routine assessment of the Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee, which is a body that reports directly to the World Health Assembly.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (51:36)
They’ve completed their first interim review of the response of the performance of our program in that. That review was published at the time of the World Health Assembly. In fact, that committee has had a briefing today with the mission representatives of all the WHO Member States. We will continue and that committee will continue with that review. There are currently reviews planned around the IHR Review Committee, and obviously the Director-General is pulling together a systematic independent evaluation based on the WHA resolution. But we are doing internal operational reviews.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (52:17)
We continue to review all of our performance. We review all of the language. I’ll hand over to Maria because she may be able to also tell you how we’re really looking at the science and what we’ve learned over the last six months.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (52:30)
Thanks Mike. Yes. We’ve said this almost every time we’ve been up here that we are constantly learning and we are constantly evolving our guidance to fit what is known about this virus that we didn’t know about six months ago. I think the way that we do that is through our international networks, where we are speaking directly with frontline workers every day. Whether these are clinicians and public health professionals. Whether these are virologists, laboratorians who are working with specimens, with samples, looking at sequences.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (53:02)
Whether we’re looking at people who are working on infection prevention and control to prevent transmission in healthcare settings. Looking at epidemiology and modeling, understanding transmission and where transmission is happening, how transmission is happening and how that affects our guidance and our advice. We are constantly looking at how we adapt our information that we share with you. We are very careful with how we explain the situation about what we know, about what we don’t know, and most importantly, how we’re working with our partners to address those unknowns. Because that is a constant evolution, especially with a new pathogen.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (53:39)
I just want to mention one last thing is about what you can do yourself. The Director-General mentioned this in his speech, but please feel empowered. Please know that you can do things yourself to prevent yourself from getting infected. And importantly, not only protecting yourself, but protecting your family and potentially somebody who is part of a vulnerable category, who has an underlying condition or maybe of advanced age, who will go on to develop severe disease if they are infected. Knowing what you can do. If you’re in a situation where there is increasing transmission or intense transmission, if you’re asked to stay home, please stay home because there are many people who can’t.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (54:20)
Those individuals who are working in health care facilities who are caring for infected patients who are in ICU, who are in hospital beds, they can’t stay home. If you can, please do. We know this is difficult, and we know that people want this to be over. There are many things that we all want to do, but it’s going to be difficult for some time before we get out of this, but we will. Not only do governments need to have strong leadership and be very clear on what needs to be done, adapting that to the most localized level as possible. You yourselves can also play a role. Men, women, children, all of you. All of us have a role to play.
Tarik: (55:01)
Many thanks. We had a bit longer answers today, but it was because questions were good. We will take two more questions before concluding this press briefing. First, we will go to Chen from China daily. Chen?
Chen: (55:17)
Hi. Dr. Tedros, you have repeatedly voiced concern over stigmatization and politicization of COVID-19, but U.S. President Donald Trump just last week in speeches and rallies continued to use words like “Kung flu” or “China virus.” Does WHO consider this as seriously undermining the global solidarity? And do you, WHO, usually convey such concerns to your U.S. contact like U.S. CDC? Thank you.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (55:59)
From WHO’s perspective, we obviously want to have international discourse that’s based on mutual respect. In that sense, we encourage all people at all levels and in all countries to use language that is appropriate, respectful, and is not associated with any connotations that are negative. In that regard, we put that message out globally. Many people around the world have used unfortunate language in this response. We certainly haven’t been immune to receiving a lot of it. But we try to focus on the way ahead.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (56:42)
We try to focus on what we need to do, and we need everybody focused as the DG has said, as Maria has said. We need everyone focused. Everyone has a job. We can actually do better than we’re doing right now. We have a lot of vulnerable people to protect and shield. We have a lot of communities with poor health systems and poor living conditions that we need to help and support, and we need to focus on that. It is unfortunate if our global discourse is reduced to base language. That never helps. But we want to focus on moving forward. We want to focus on getting this job done.
Tarik: (57:25)
Thank you, Dr. Ryan. Our last question will go to Jamil, our Geneva neighbor, who is working for number of Brazilian press. Jamil?
Jamil: (57:39)
Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. My question is on Brazil. What is your current evaluation about Brazil? And whether this strategy that you just mentioned now for over an hour is actually being implemented? Thank you.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (58:05)
Certainly in the Americas, and I’ll come to Brazil, but overall in the Americas, the situation is difficult. The Americas, as a whole, represent half the cases and almost half the deaths in the whole world. If you look at Brazil itself, quite a proportion of all the cases in the Americas, 26%. That’s one in four of all the cases and one in four of all the deaths in the continent. There’s no question that Brazil is still facing a big challenge. It continues to report over 30, 000 cases a day from all 27 federal levels, or from all of the different state levels.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (59:08)
Brazil is still facing a challenge. Yes, a comprehensive approach to the response is needed at all levels. It is tough. The force of infection is high. There are many challenging situations in Brazil. There are deeply congested and dense populated areas in the urban setting that have very poor services. There are people living in rural conditions as well that are difficult to reach and difficult to serve. It would be silly to underestimate the size and the complexity of a great country like Brazil.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (59:48)
But equally it would also be important to recognize that Brazil has a huge and proud history in the management of infectious diseases and has many excellent scientific and other institutions. And has shown a tremendous capacity, not only for combating infectious diseases, but developing vaccines that have stopped diseases like yellow fever in so many other countries. Yes, we would encourage, again, once more, that Brazil continues to fight against the disease. That Brazil links the efforts at federal and at state level in a much more systematic way.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (01:00:24)
That there is a focus on a comprehensive approach to controlling the disease and doing that in a sustained fashion. It is easy, obviously, to criticize any individual country and no country, no organization is without criticism or without fault or without difficulty in this response. Again, today’s message is not about what happened last week, last month or the last three months. When the Director-General talks about politicization as well, we all need to recognize that in many countries, the government is the government of the day.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (01:01:04)
We need to find a way for each government to find the way forward, for each government to serve its citizens, for each government to serve its people and we need to encourage and support governments in doing that. We need to find all of government, all of society approaches. When we talk about avoiding politicization of the virus, that cuts both ways. We may, in many situations as individuals in society, have to provide encouragement and support for a government that may not be of our choosing or liking. That is the difficulty and the challenge of national unity against a common enemy.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (01:01:47)
When you choose national unity against a common enemy, you sometimes don’t get to choose who leads you in that fight. You have to find a way. You have to find a way to be able to take that forward, and that’s the challenge for all countries now. I would just say from my personal perspective that we cannot continue to allow the fight against this virus to become and be sustained as an ideological fight. It cannot be. We cannot beat this virus with ideologies. We simply cannot. I think everybody now needs to take a step back at six months.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (01:02:27)
Everyone, every individual, needs to look in the mirror and say, “Am I doing enough?” Every politician needs to look in the mirror and say, “Am I doing enough to stop this virus?” I think we need to have a big conversation with ourselves on this, and now is the time because we don’t have time to waste.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (01:02:49)
If I just may briefly add it has nothing to do with the politics, but it’s about the science. I would like to ask us to side on the side of science and to side on the side of public health and experience. We are learning from experience. We are learning about this virus. We know what works. We’re not saying that it’s easy. We’re not saying that it will not take more time, and it will be difficult for individuals and families and communities and nations.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (01:03:17)
But we are adapting our approach and tailoring our approach based on what we are learning. We need people to be with us with this science as we communicate this with you, as we adapt it within our guidance, as we modify these approaches going forward. We know what works in suppressing transmission, and we know what works for reducing mortality. Let’s do that.
Tarik: (01:03:44)
This will conclude a longer than usual press briefing. Still, we will have the audio file sent to you soon, and the transcript will be posted tomorrow from my side. I wish you a very nice evening.
Dr. Tedros: (01:04:05)
Thank you. Thank you, Tarik. Thank you all for joining and as I said earlier, we have a new timeline of the past six months, and would really appreciate it if you have a look and give us your feedback. And look forward to seeing you on Wednesday. Thank you.
June 29, 2020
Press briefings
Part 2 Transcript/ Continued from above / source:
Dr. Michael Ryan: (46:31)
Okay. I think and if we listened to interviews and others done by people who’ve led contact tracing in places like Singapore, in Japan, and in other countries, the primary success of contact racing has come from a well-organized human workforce. [inaudible 00:46:53] number one. Once a case is detected, once there’s a positive sample in the lab. Maybe it’s from the emergency room, from the hospital, from the community, that there’s an instant response where a case or their family can be interviewed, that contacts are identified quickly. And in that sense, the highest risk context, you can have a contact list that’s 10, and you can have a contact list that’s 10,000 people. And you have to decide how far and how deep you go with listing potential contacts. They all have to be contacted and followed up. Of those who are followed up, you’re asking in most countries’ situations, you’re asking for those contacts to be self-isolated or quarantined at home and some situations people are asked to quarantine in a facility.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (47:38)
So it’s a very complex set of investigations and then communication between different groups. And one group has to hand off the process to another group. So it’s a complex interaction of public health activities. Now obviously when you’re moving information around, the lab has to inform the contact tracers and the contact tracers have to inform the people organizing quarantine. All of those require a lot of transfer of information. And there are a number of digital tools that have really helped with that process. Like the system developed by WHO Go.Data, which has been implemented in a number of countries. And that allows public health authorities to integrate data from different sources within the system. There’s no privacy issues there because that’s really about being more efficient with publicly held data.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (48:24)
There are then other applications that have been developed, which allow for mobility tracking or identifying potentially other high risk contacts. Bluetooth enabled apps that allow that to happen. And some countries have implemented apps like that. And those apps can be a useful in identifying contacts who may not have otherwise been listed and in some way it’s also for looking at overall population risk for transmission. Some have worked, some have not, some have been very well accepted at community level, some have raised real issues regarding data protection, and human rights and other issues. So it’s important that we continue to innovate with these tools but it’s also important to recognize that that aspect of the digital revolution is innovating and providing potential solutions and tools. The core process is still a core human-driven process. It’s about humans contacting humans and asking questions about potential exposures and following up with other human beings.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (49:33)
This is not an automated process. It cannot be automated in that regard. And I think that’s where most countries have struggled. It’s one thing to develop an app. It’s another thing to identify and train a human workforce that can go out and be disease detectives. And you’ll see that in most countries who’ve been successful, what they’ve really managed to do is train community-based people who know their localities, they’ve trained them in how to do contact tracing, they’ve trained them on how to follow up within their own communities. And that’s much better accepted. And we found the same in Ebola in Congo. If you bring contact tracers into small villages where people are outsiders, it’s a potential flash point. So the more localized the responses, the better. And localization of public health intervention is a very important concept. And it’s something that governments need to address. So I think that would be my advice.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (50:27)
Localize contact tracing, bring it down to the lowest level, have it as much as possible based in and done by the community and enhance the efficiency of that where you can, with digital systems and applications as appropriate. But they’re not in themselves the answer. With regard to your second question regarding what we learned, we’re learning a lot. And interestingly, when we talk about contact tracing, we had a major meeting two weeks ago from experts from all over the world who’ve been implementing contact tracing. Today we have a meeting of the Steering Committee of GOARN which is considering the outcomes of that meeting.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (51:03)
… of the steering committee of GOARN, which is considering the outcomes of that meeting. I think tomorrow we begin a meeting on what we’ve learned in research over the last six months in the next few days. Right now at this six-month period, we’ve been doing ourselves internally, a number of internal retreats, looking at what we’ve learned over the last six months. Our program, the Emergencies Programme here is under the routine assessment of the Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee, which is a body that reports directly to the World Health Assembly.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (51:36)
They’ve completed their first interim review of the response of the performance of our program in that. That review was published at the time of the World Health Assembly. In fact, that committee has had a briefing today with the mission representatives of all the WHO Member States. We will continue and that committee will continue with that review. There are currently reviews planned around the IHR Review Committee, and obviously the Director-General is pulling together a systematic independent evaluation based on the WHA resolution. But we are doing internal operational reviews.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (52:17)
We continue to review all of our performance. We review all of the language. I’ll hand over to Maria because she may be able to also tell you how we’re really looking at the science and what we’ve learned over the last six months.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (52:30)
Thanks Mike. Yes. We’ve said this almost every time we’ve been up here that we are constantly learning and we are constantly evolving our guidance to fit what is known about this virus that we didn’t know about six months ago. I think the way that we do that is through our international networks, where we are speaking directly with frontline workers every day. Whether these are clinicians and public health professionals. Whether these are virologists, laboratorians who are working with specimens, with samples, looking at sequences.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (53:02)
Whether we’re looking at people who are working on infection prevention and control to prevent transmission in healthcare settings. Looking at epidemiology and modeling, understanding transmission and where transmission is happening, how transmission is happening and how that affects our guidance and our advice. We are constantly looking at how we adapt our information that we share with you. We are very careful with how we explain the situation about what we know, about what we don’t know, and most importantly, how we’re working with our partners to address those unknowns. Because that is a constant evolution, especially with a new pathogen.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (53:39)
I just want to mention one last thing is about what you can do yourself. The Director-General mentioned this in his speech, but please feel empowered. Please know that you can do things yourself to prevent yourself from getting infected. And importantly, not only protecting yourself, but protecting your family and potentially somebody who is part of a vulnerable category, who has an underlying condition or maybe of advanced age, who will go on to develop severe disease if they are infected. Knowing what you can do. If you’re in a situation where there is increasing transmission or intense transmission, if you’re asked to stay home, please stay home because there are many people who can’t.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (54:20)
Those individuals who are working in health care facilities who are caring for infected patients who are in ICU, who are in hospital beds, they can’t stay home. If you can, please do. We know this is difficult, and we know that people want this to be over. There are many things that we all want to do, but it’s going to be difficult for some time before we get out of this, but we will. Not only do governments need to have strong leadership and be very clear on what needs to be done, adapting that to the most localized level as possible. You yourselves can also play a role. Men, women, children, all of you. All of us have a role to play.
Tarik: (55:01)
Many thanks. We had a bit longer answers today, but it was because questions were good. We will take two more questions before concluding this press briefing. First, we will go to Chen from China daily. Chen?
Chen: (55:17)
Hi. Dr. Tedros, you have repeatedly voiced concern over stigmatization and politicization of COVID-19, but U.S. President Donald Trump just last week in speeches and rallies continued to use words like “Kung flu” or “China virus.” Does WHO consider this as seriously undermining the global solidarity? And do you, WHO, usually convey such concerns to your U.S. contact like U.S. CDC? Thank you.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (55:59)
From WHO’s perspective, we obviously want to have international discourse that’s based on mutual respect. In that sense, we encourage all people at all levels and in all countries to use language that is appropriate, respectful, and is not associated with any connotations that are negative. In that regard, we put that message out globally. Many people around the world have used unfortunate language in this response. We certainly haven’t been immune to receiving a lot of it. But we try to focus on the way ahead.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (56:42)
We try to focus on what we need to do, and we need everybody focused as the DG has said, as Maria has said. We need everyone focused. Everyone has a job. We can actually do better than we’re doing right now. We have a lot of vulnerable people to protect and shield. We have a lot of communities with poor health systems and poor living conditions that we need to help and support, and we need to focus on that. It is unfortunate if our global discourse is reduced to base language. That never helps. But we want to focus on moving forward. We want to focus on getting this job done.
Tarik: (57:25)
Thank you, Dr. Ryan. Our last question will go to Jamil, our Geneva neighbor, who is working for number of Brazilian press. Jamil?
Jamil: (57:39)
Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. My question is on Brazil. What is your current evaluation about Brazil? And whether this strategy that you just mentioned now for over an hour is actually being implemented? Thank you.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (58:05)
Certainly in the Americas, and I’ll come to Brazil, but overall in the Americas, the situation is difficult. The Americas, as a whole, represent half the cases and almost half the deaths in the whole world. If you look at Brazil itself, quite a proportion of all the cases in the Americas, 26%. That’s one in four of all the cases and one in four of all the deaths in the continent. There’s no question that Brazil is still facing a big challenge. It continues to report over 30, 000 cases a day from all 27 federal levels, or from all of the different state levels.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (59:08)
Brazil is still facing a challenge. Yes, a comprehensive approach to the response is needed at all levels. It is tough. The force of infection is high. There are many challenging situations in Brazil. There are deeply congested and dense populated areas in the urban setting that have very poor services. There are people living in rural conditions as well that are difficult to reach and difficult to serve. It would be silly to underestimate the size and the complexity of a great country like Brazil.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (59:48)
But equally it would also be important to recognize that Brazil has a huge and proud history in the management of infectious diseases and has many excellent scientific and other institutions. And has shown a tremendous capacity, not only for combating infectious diseases, but developing vaccines that have stopped diseases like yellow fever in so many other countries. Yes, we would encourage, again, once more, that Brazil continues to fight against the disease. That Brazil links the efforts at federal and at state level in a much more systematic way.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (01:00:24)
That there is a focus on a comprehensive approach to controlling the disease and doing that in a sustained fashion. It is easy, obviously, to criticize any individual country and no country, no organization is without criticism or without fault or without difficulty in this response. Again, today’s message is not about what happened last week, last month or the last three months. When the Director-General talks about politicization as well, we all need to recognize that in many countries, the government is the government of the day.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (01:01:04)
We need to find a way for each government to find the way forward, for each government to serve its citizens, for each government to serve its people and we need to encourage and support governments in doing that. We need to find all of government, all of society approaches. When we talk about avoiding politicization of the virus, that cuts both ways. We may, in many situations as individuals in society, have to provide encouragement and support for a government that may not be of our choosing or liking. That is the difficulty and the challenge of national unity against a common enemy.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (01:01:47)
When you choose national unity against a common enemy, you sometimes don’t get to choose who leads you in that fight. You have to find a way. You have to find a way to be able to take that forward, and that’s the challenge for all countries now. I would just say from my personal perspective that we cannot continue to allow the fight against this virus to become and be sustained as an ideological fight. It cannot be. We cannot beat this virus with ideologies. We simply cannot. I think everybody now needs to take a step back at six months.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (01:02:27)
Everyone, every individual, needs to look in the mirror and say, “Am I doing enough?” Every politician needs to look in the mirror and say, “Am I doing enough to stop this virus?” I think we need to have a big conversation with ourselves on this, and now is the time because we don’t have time to waste.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (01:02:49)
If I just may briefly add it has nothing to do with the politics, but it’s about the science. I would like to ask us to side on the side of science and to side on the side of public health and experience. We are learning from experience. We are learning about this virus. We know what works. We’re not saying that it’s easy. We’re not saying that it will not take more time, and it will be difficult for individuals and families and communities and nations.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (01:03:17)
But we are adapting our approach and tailoring our approach based on what we are learning. We need people to be with us with this science as we communicate this with you, as we adapt it within our guidance, as we modify these approaches going forward. We know what works in suppressing transmission, and we know what works for reducing mortality. Let’s do that.
Tarik: (01:03:44)
This will conclude a longer than usual press briefing. Still, we will have the audio file sent to you soon, and the transcript will be posted tomorrow from my side. I wish you a very nice evening.
Dr. Tedros: (01:04:05)
Thank you. Thank you, Tarik. Thank you all for joining and as I said earlier, we have a new timeline of the past six months, and would really appreciate it if you have a look and give us your feedback. And look forward to seeing you on Wednesday. Thank you.
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margarita25
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Re: G4 / July 1 Who Briefing / transcript
Dr. Michael Ryan:
“With regard to the issue of the … You referred to the new virus. I think it’s important for us to clarify that the, I believe the virus you’re referring to is the Eurasian avian-like H1N1 swine influenza virus, which has been a virus that’s been under surveillance by Chinese authorities, and by the global influenza surveillance network around the world, the WHO collaborating centers.
It’s been under surveillance since 2011. And in fact, the publication, the most recent publication is a publication of all of that surveillance data over that time. And obviously reporting both on the evolution of that virus within the swine population, but also in terms of occupational exposures to workers over that time. It’s very important work, and it’s work that is again, carried out in collaboration with the WHO collaborating center at China CDC, the other collaborating centers around the world, including the WHO collaborating center for influenza. That’s CDC in Atlanta, and again shows the vital importance of the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System.
The WHO collaborating center network, who keep these viruses under constant, constant surveillance. There are many, many, many avian flu and influenza viruses out there that have pandemic potential. We learned that in 2009, where a pandemic emerged in the Americas and we constantly need to stay on the alert. We need to continue to carry a very, very good surveillance on this G4 genotype, and we expect that, that will continue in the coming months and years. But again, it’s important I think, to reassure people that this is not a new virus, this is a virus that is under surveillance. We are concerned with any viruses that show potential to infect humans, and we will continue with our collaborating centers and the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, to keep this virus under close surveillance.”
[...]
“Costas Davinas: (33:55)
Yes. Thank you for taking my question. I’m coming back to the G4 virus. Can you give us, please, some [inaudible 00:34:04] information’s about this new virus and how dangerous can it be in connection with COVID-19? Thank you.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (34:14)
I will begin. I think I’ve given you, number one, this is a recent, a very recent publication. As I said, the viruses discussed in the paper that’s just been published are not new. And in fact, these G4 genotype was previously reported in swine in China, with the Harvard Veterinary Research Institute in a 2016 publication. The G4 genotype have been the dominant genotype in swine populations in China since 2016. The interesting finding in the latest report, is the zero prevalence among swine workers, which needs to be looked into carefully with an elevated zero prevalence rate against the G4 virus being reported. But this needs to be reviewed and looked at, and we need to really understand the study design, and the context, and exactly how that process was carried out.
Sporadic zoonotic infections, infections that transfer from swine to humans with the G4 genotype, have been reported in the past. And as I said, the WHO collaborating centers, particularly the one that China CDC and the one, our collaborating center in the United States at CDC in Atlanta, have been working on this Eurasian avian-like H1N1 variant. And this has been, as I said, under surveillance now for many years. What is interesting in collaboration with our flu and the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System in monitoring this, different candidate vaccine viruses of closely related strains have been developed by WHO at the China CDC, and they’re available for vaccine development and preparedness purposes. This has been a huge part of developing the …
… preparedness purposes. This has been a huge part of developing the pandemic influenza preparedness framework and ensuring that we are constantly checking on each and every one of these viruses and ensuring that candidate vaccine strands are available for rapid development should any one of these numerous strands ever show a likelihood of spreading successfully or efficiently in human populations. But again, I’d like just to restate that this is a finding from surveillance that’s been carried out over many years. These are not new viruses. We always take any variant strains of swine flu viruses extremely seriously, and that is why we will work and continue to work with our collaborating centers around the world on the surveillance and the development of countermeasures. Maria?
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (36:48)
Just to add that this paper highlights the importance of the work that WHO and partners do with our collaborating centers globally, looking at viruses that are circulating in animals. This one happens to be a swine influenza virus, but there are other coronaviruses that are circulating in animals. There are other known pathogens that are out there.
And what we are doing is we are working with partner agencies at FAO and OIE, with academic institutions across the globe, with national centers for disease control all over the world to conduct surveillance in wild animals, to conduct surveillance in domesticated animals and to conduct surveillance in those animal workers to ensure that if there is a virus that spills over, that we are able to detect it, and we are able to detect it rapidly. There’s a whole body of work and scientists that are working globally on all continents that are looking at these viruses. And for those of you who are watching who may not know that, I think it’s important to mention.
So as Mike has said, this is not a new virus. This is a paper that is reporting on surveillance activities that have taken place between 2011 and 2018 in China. We’re grateful for all of our partners who are doing work in this area of looking at the epidemic potential. We always say essentially is a virus that is circulating in animals, it can spill over into humans. We call that a zoonotic transmission and the potential for that virus to continue to spread. But this is an important area of work and it highlights the need to remain focused on this. Even though COVID is happening globally, we still need to ensure that our surveillance programs for influenza are continuing and that we strengthen them so that we are able to detect these viruses spilling over rapidly.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (38:35)
If I could just add to that, that the global influenza surveillance and response system collaborate centers, national influenza centers around the world are constantly doing surveillance for seasonal influenza. And they are the basis of developing the yearly seasonal influenza vaccines for the northern and southern hemispheres. They carry out active and ongoing surveillance of avian flu strains around the world. All of that infrastructure has been turned and is now looking also at COVID-19 and doing sentinel surveillance for both COVID-19 and for other influenza viruses.
This is a hugely important global good. This is a massive piece of global health security. And I would remind our member states and our donors that this system is constantly underfunded and this system is in constant threat of being not funded. Our colleagues, Rick Brennan is online from the Eastern Mediterranean region. We spent the last five years investing and expanding the influenza surveillance and response capacities in the Eastern Mediterranean and on the African continent. And we now face a situation due to funding shortages that we may have to pull back on these investments. And these are the trade-offs and unfortunate trade-offs that we may have to make.“
Dr. Michael Ryan:
“With regard to the issue of the … You referred to the new virus. I think it’s important for us to clarify that the, I believe the virus you’re referring to is the Eurasian avian-like H1N1 swine influenza virus, which has been a virus that’s been under surveillance by Chinese authorities, and by the global influenza surveillance network around the world, the WHO collaborating centers.
It’s been under surveillance since 2011. And in fact, the publication, the most recent publication is a publication of all of that surveillance data over that time. And obviously reporting both on the evolution of that virus within the swine population, but also in terms of occupational exposures to workers over that time. It’s very important work, and it’s work that is again, carried out in collaboration with the WHO collaborating center at China CDC, the other collaborating centers around the world, including the WHO collaborating center for influenza. That’s CDC in Atlanta, and again shows the vital importance of the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System.
The WHO collaborating center network, who keep these viruses under constant, constant surveillance. There are many, many, many avian flu and influenza viruses out there that have pandemic potential. We learned that in 2009, where a pandemic emerged in the Americas and we constantly need to stay on the alert. We need to continue to carry a very, very good surveillance on this G4 genotype, and we expect that, that will continue in the coming months and years. But again, it’s important I think, to reassure people that this is not a new virus, this is a virus that is under surveillance. We are concerned with any viruses that show potential to infect humans, and we will continue with our collaborating centers and the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, to keep this virus under close surveillance.”
[...]
“Costas Davinas: (33:55)
Yes. Thank you for taking my question. I’m coming back to the G4 virus. Can you give us, please, some [inaudible 00:34:04] information’s about this new virus and how dangerous can it be in connection with COVID-19? Thank you.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (34:14)
I will begin. I think I’ve given you, number one, this is a recent, a very recent publication. As I said, the viruses discussed in the paper that’s just been published are not new. And in fact, these G4 genotype was previously reported in swine in China, with the Harvard Veterinary Research Institute in a 2016 publication. The G4 genotype have been the dominant genotype in swine populations in China since 2016. The interesting finding in the latest report, is the zero prevalence among swine workers, which needs to be looked into carefully with an elevated zero prevalence rate against the G4 virus being reported. But this needs to be reviewed and looked at, and we need to really understand the study design, and the context, and exactly how that process was carried out.
Sporadic zoonotic infections, infections that transfer from swine to humans with the G4 genotype, have been reported in the past. And as I said, the WHO collaborating centers, particularly the one that China CDC and the one, our collaborating center in the United States at CDC in Atlanta, have been working on this Eurasian avian-like H1N1 variant. And this has been, as I said, under surveillance now for many years. What is interesting in collaboration with our flu and the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System in monitoring this, different candidate vaccine viruses of closely related strains have been developed by WHO at the China CDC, and they’re available for vaccine development and preparedness purposes. This has been a huge part of developing the …
… preparedness purposes. This has been a huge part of developing the pandemic influenza preparedness framework and ensuring that we are constantly checking on each and every one of these viruses and ensuring that candidate vaccine strands are available for rapid development should any one of these numerous strands ever show a likelihood of spreading successfully or efficiently in human populations. But again, I’d like just to restate that this is a finding from surveillance that’s been carried out over many years. These are not new viruses. We always take any variant strains of swine flu viruses extremely seriously, and that is why we will work and continue to work with our collaborating centers around the world on the surveillance and the development of countermeasures. Maria?
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (36:48)
Just to add that this paper highlights the importance of the work that WHO and partners do with our collaborating centers globally, looking at viruses that are circulating in animals. This one happens to be a swine influenza virus, but there are other coronaviruses that are circulating in animals. There are other known pathogens that are out there.
And what we are doing is we are working with partner agencies at FAO and OIE, with academic institutions across the globe, with national centers for disease control all over the world to conduct surveillance in wild animals, to conduct surveillance in domesticated animals and to conduct surveillance in those animal workers to ensure that if there is a virus that spills over, that we are able to detect it, and we are able to detect it rapidly. There’s a whole body of work and scientists that are working globally on all continents that are looking at these viruses. And for those of you who are watching who may not know that, I think it’s important to mention.
So as Mike has said, this is not a new virus. This is a paper that is reporting on surveillance activities that have taken place between 2011 and 2018 in China. We’re grateful for all of our partners who are doing work in this area of looking at the epidemic potential. We always say essentially is a virus that is circulating in animals, it can spill over into humans. We call that a zoonotic transmission and the potential for that virus to continue to spread. But this is an important area of work and it highlights the need to remain focused on this. Even though COVID is happening globally, we still need to ensure that our surveillance programs for influenza are continuing and that we strengthen them so that we are able to detect these viruses spilling over rapidly.
Dr. Michael Ryan: (38:35)
If I could just add to that, that the global influenza surveillance and response system collaborate centers, national influenza centers around the world are constantly doing surveillance for seasonal influenza. And they are the basis of developing the yearly seasonal influenza vaccines for the northern and southern hemispheres. They carry out active and ongoing surveillance of avian flu strains around the world. All of that infrastructure has been turned and is now looking also at COVID-19 and doing sentinel surveillance for both COVID-19 and for other influenza viruses.
This is a hugely important global good. This is a massive piece of global health security. And I would remind our member states and our donors that this system is constantly underfunded and this system is in constant threat of being not funded. Our colleagues, Rick Brennan is online from the Eastern Mediterranean region. We spent the last five years investing and expanding the influenza surveillance and response capacities in the Eastern Mediterranean and on the African continent. And we now face a situation due to funding shortages that we may have to pull back on these investments. And these are the trade-offs and unfortunate trade-offs that we may have to make.“
Last edited:
margarita25
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- 51,333
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July 1 Who Briefing / transcript /
Press briefings
Jim Roope: (20:46)
“Yes, thank you very much and hello everyone. I apologize for not having a question about the Mediterranean thing, but I do have a question about, as I understand it, there is no vaccine for a coronavirus, and this is the first coronavirus pandemic. So my question is, if there is a vaccine that is developed successfully for this coronavirus, and I’m assuming there will be. Will that help in developing a universal vaccine for the coronavirus, or just a universal vaccine in general? Would this be a great step toward that?
Dr. Michael Ryan: (21:34)
Universal vaccines against respiratory pathogens are really the holy grail of our longterm hopes. We’ve spent many decades thinking and hoping for a universal vaccine against influenza, and that has not been achieved. Although, much work is currently underway to develop such a universal vaccine, and that work is funded by many agencies around the world, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So, identifying the targets in viruses that are conserved over time, in other words, sequences or proteins that we can develop vaccines against, that allow us to give a universal protection, are very important.
It remains to be seen whether a vaccine against this coronavirus would provide any cross protection against other coronaviruses. Many of the vaccines being developed are being developed against the surface proteins of the virus. There is a constant variation in those proteins, and therefore we would hope that the vaccines that are developed will be effective against this strain of the virus. It remains to be seen whether that would provide any cross protection. And I would imagine, given the longterm threat presented by coronaviruses and what we see out there in nature, that the longterm pursuit of more universal vaccines against [Sarah’s 00:23:00] coronaviruses should be a longterm objective in the vaccine development community.
But for now, we deal with SARS-CoV-2, and what we do need is a safe and effective vaccine against this virus. And as you know, many, many products are currently in the pipeline, many now in clinical trials. We hope that such vaccines will be number one, effective. Number two, safe, and number three, will be accepted by people around the world and be available for everyone who needs them. And those outcomes are not a given, and we have a lot of hard work to do in order to be able to achieve that. But yes, the pursuit of universal vaccines is a very positive idea, but as I said, it’s easy to say, it’s hard to do. We’re many decades into influenza control, and we’re still not close to having universal vaccines against that virus.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (23:54)
Thanks Mike. Just to add, to say that I think this is a very good question, and it’s a good opportunity to say that the work on vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, began even before January, 2020 with the development of vaccines for SARS-CoV-1 and for MERS. And so, the work that began there was building the research capacity, building the techniques and the technologies that could be used to advance vaccine development as a whole. And so, in January, 2020, we didn’t start from scratch. We had a new virus, we had a new pathogen, and being able to know what that is triggered our work into focusing on SARS-CoV-2, as Mike has just said.
But the collaborations that began with scientists all over the world, with manufacturers, with production companies. That started before, and now we’ve enhanced that, and now we’ve accelerated that. Working towards a vaccine that is safe, that is effective, and that is available for those who need it. But I think we should pay homage to the people who have been working on coronaviruses for decades. There are a number of coronaviruses that circulate. And so, those that did the hard work for SARS-CoV-1, those that are doing the work for MERS, because MERS is still circulating in the Eastern Mediterranean region, and other countries as well. Any advancement we could make for a coronavirus vaccine, will get us closer to a vaccine for any coronavirus that emerges. Hopefully this work will pay off in the long run.”
Press briefings
Jim Roope: (20:46)
“Yes, thank you very much and hello everyone. I apologize for not having a question about the Mediterranean thing, but I do have a question about, as I understand it, there is no vaccine for a coronavirus, and this is the first coronavirus pandemic. So my question is, if there is a vaccine that is developed successfully for this coronavirus, and I’m assuming there will be. Will that help in developing a universal vaccine for the coronavirus, or just a universal vaccine in general? Would this be a great step toward that?
Dr. Michael Ryan: (21:34)
Universal vaccines against respiratory pathogens are really the holy grail of our longterm hopes. We’ve spent many decades thinking and hoping for a universal vaccine against influenza, and that has not been achieved. Although, much work is currently underway to develop such a universal vaccine, and that work is funded by many agencies around the world, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So, identifying the targets in viruses that are conserved over time, in other words, sequences or proteins that we can develop vaccines against, that allow us to give a universal protection, are very important.
It remains to be seen whether a vaccine against this coronavirus would provide any cross protection against other coronaviruses. Many of the vaccines being developed are being developed against the surface proteins of the virus. There is a constant variation in those proteins, and therefore we would hope that the vaccines that are developed will be effective against this strain of the virus. It remains to be seen whether that would provide any cross protection. And I would imagine, given the longterm threat presented by coronaviruses and what we see out there in nature, that the longterm pursuit of more universal vaccines against [Sarah’s 00:23:00] coronaviruses should be a longterm objective in the vaccine development community.
But for now, we deal with SARS-CoV-2, and what we do need is a safe and effective vaccine against this virus. And as you know, many, many products are currently in the pipeline, many now in clinical trials. We hope that such vaccines will be number one, effective. Number two, safe, and number three, will be accepted by people around the world and be available for everyone who needs them. And those outcomes are not a given, and we have a lot of hard work to do in order to be able to achieve that. But yes, the pursuit of universal vaccines is a very positive idea, but as I said, it’s easy to say, it’s hard to do. We’re many decades into influenza control, and we’re still not close to having universal vaccines against that virus.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: (23:54)
Thanks Mike. Just to add, to say that I think this is a very good question, and it’s a good opportunity to say that the work on vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, began even before January, 2020 with the development of vaccines for SARS-CoV-1 and for MERS. And so, the work that began there was building the research capacity, building the techniques and the technologies that could be used to advance vaccine development as a whole. And so, in January, 2020, we didn’t start from scratch. We had a new virus, we had a new pathogen, and being able to know what that is triggered our work into focusing on SARS-CoV-2, as Mike has just said.
But the collaborations that began with scientists all over the world, with manufacturers, with production companies. That started before, and now we’ve enhanced that, and now we’ve accelerated that. Working towards a vaccine that is safe, that is effective, and that is available for those who need it. But I think we should pay homage to the people who have been working on coronaviruses for decades. There are a number of coronaviruses that circulate. And so, those that did the hard work for SARS-CoV-1, those that are doing the work for MERS, because MERS is still circulating in the Eastern Mediterranean region, and other countries as well. Any advancement we could make for a coronavirus vaccine, will get us closer to a vaccine for any coronavirus that emerges. Hopefully this work will pay off in the long run.”
margarita25
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Press briefings
July 7 WHO Press Conference / source
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening.
It took 12 weeks for the world to reach 400 thousand cases of COVID-19.
Over the weekend, there were more than 400 thousand cases across the globe.
There have now been 11.4 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 535,000 lives have been lost.
The outbreak is accelerating and we have clearly not reached the peak of the pandemic.
While the number of deaths appears to have levelled off globally, in reality some countries have made significant progress in reducing the number of deaths, while in other countries deaths are still on the rise.
Where there has been progress in reducing deaths, countries have implemented targeted actions toward the most vulnerable groups, for example those people living in long-term care facilities.
===
Over the past few months, there has been a lot of discussion about the origins of COVID-19.
All preparations have been finalised and WHO experts will be traveling to China this weekend to prepare scientific plans with their Chinese counterparts for identifying the zoonotic source of the disease.
The experts will develop the scope and terms of reference for a WHO-led international mission.
The mission objective is to advance the understanding of animal hosts for COVID-19 and ascertain how the disease jumped between animals and humans.
===
WHO will continue to communicate the latest scientific advances to the media and general public as we have them.
In this vein, WHO continues to work with technology companies to make sure people have access to accurate health information and resources on COVID-19.
Today, I am pleased to announce that we have partnered with Facebook and Praekelt.org to provide WHO’s COVID-19 information in Free Basics and Discover, in a mobile-friendly format.
Through this collaboration, we will reach some of the most vulnerable people who will be able to access lifesaving health information without any data charges in more than 50 countries.
We have launched this product in English.
French, Spanish and Arabic and other languages will follow in the coming weeks.
Furthermore, I want to thank Google for its continued support and dedication to keep the global community safe and informed and for its recently increased ad grant to WHO.
This support enables us to catch trending falsehoods early, respond to them quickly, and give people better access to lifesaving information when they need it most, wherever they are in the world.
===
This pandemic has shown the importance of being able to see each other online while being physically apart.
And 20 years on from the Durban AIDS Conference, a game changing moment in the fight against HIV; leaders, policy makers, scientists, activists and civil society are assembling virtually this week for AIDS 2020.
WHO is deeply concerned about the impact of COVID-19 on the global response to HIV.
A new WHO survey showed access to HIV medicines has been significantly curtailed as a result of the pandemic.
73 countries have reported that they are at risk of stock-outs of antiretroviral medicines (ARVs).
To mitigate the impact of the pandemic on treatment access, WHO recommends all countries prescribe ARVs for longer periods of time.
Up to six months while supply chains for all medicines are fully functioning.
Similarly, shortages of condoms and pre-exposure prophylaxis can prove costly and WHO calls for countries to ensure uninterrupted prevention, testing and treatment services for HIV.
The disruptions in access to life-saving commodities and services come at a critical moment as progress in the global response to HIV stalls.
Over the last two years, numbers of new HIV infections stabilised at 1.7 million annually and there was only a modest reduction in AIDS-related deaths.
More than 25 million people now have access to ARVs but global targets for prevention, testing and treatment are off target.
Progress is stalling because HIV prevention and testing services are not reaching the groups that need them most.
And the lack of optimal HIV medicines with suitable pediatric formulations has been a longstanding barrier to improving health outcomes for children living with HIV.
Going forward, access to services for vulnerable groups must be expanded through stronger community engagement, improved service delivery and tackling stigma and discrimination.
Twenty years ago, Nelson Mandela closed the AIDS conference by saying:
“This is, as I understand it, a gathering of human beings concerned about turning around one of the greatest threats humankind has faced.”
Those words from Madiba echoed through a generation of activists and policy makers alike and I say them today as a message to the world.
More than six months in, the case for national unity and global solidarity is undeniable.
To beat the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure that essential health services for diseases like HIV continue; we cannot afford any divisions.
I will say it again. National unity and global solidarity are more important than ever to defeat a common enemy, a virus that has taken the world hostage.
This is our only road out of this pandemic. I repeat national unity and global solidarity.
I thank you.
July 7 WHO Press Conference / source
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening.
It took 12 weeks for the world to reach 400 thousand cases of COVID-19.
Over the weekend, there were more than 400 thousand cases across the globe.
There have now been 11.4 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 535,000 lives have been lost.
The outbreak is accelerating and we have clearly not reached the peak of the pandemic.
While the number of deaths appears to have levelled off globally, in reality some countries have made significant progress in reducing the number of deaths, while in other countries deaths are still on the rise.
Where there has been progress in reducing deaths, countries have implemented targeted actions toward the most vulnerable groups, for example those people living in long-term care facilities.
===
Over the past few months, there has been a lot of discussion about the origins of COVID-19.
All preparations have been finalised and WHO experts will be traveling to China this weekend to prepare scientific plans with their Chinese counterparts for identifying the zoonotic source of the disease.
The experts will develop the scope and terms of reference for a WHO-led international mission.
The mission objective is to advance the understanding of animal hosts for COVID-19 and ascertain how the disease jumped between animals and humans.
===
WHO will continue to communicate the latest scientific advances to the media and general public as we have them.
In this vein, WHO continues to work with technology companies to make sure people have access to accurate health information and resources on COVID-19.
Today, I am pleased to announce that we have partnered with Facebook and Praekelt.org to provide WHO’s COVID-19 information in Free Basics and Discover, in a mobile-friendly format.
Through this collaboration, we will reach some of the most vulnerable people who will be able to access lifesaving health information without any data charges in more than 50 countries.
We have launched this product in English.
French, Spanish and Arabic and other languages will follow in the coming weeks.
Furthermore, I want to thank Google for its continued support and dedication to keep the global community safe and informed and for its recently increased ad grant to WHO.
This support enables us to catch trending falsehoods early, respond to them quickly, and give people better access to lifesaving information when they need it most, wherever they are in the world.
===
This pandemic has shown the importance of being able to see each other online while being physically apart.
And 20 years on from the Durban AIDS Conference, a game changing moment in the fight against HIV; leaders, policy makers, scientists, activists and civil society are assembling virtually this week for AIDS 2020.
WHO is deeply concerned about the impact of COVID-19 on the global response to HIV.
A new WHO survey showed access to HIV medicines has been significantly curtailed as a result of the pandemic.
73 countries have reported that they are at risk of stock-outs of antiretroviral medicines (ARVs).
To mitigate the impact of the pandemic on treatment access, WHO recommends all countries prescribe ARVs for longer periods of time.
Up to six months while supply chains for all medicines are fully functioning.
Similarly, shortages of condoms and pre-exposure prophylaxis can prove costly and WHO calls for countries to ensure uninterrupted prevention, testing and treatment services for HIV.
The disruptions in access to life-saving commodities and services come at a critical moment as progress in the global response to HIV stalls.
Over the last two years, numbers of new HIV infections stabilised at 1.7 million annually and there was only a modest reduction in AIDS-related deaths.
More than 25 million people now have access to ARVs but global targets for prevention, testing and treatment are off target.
Progress is stalling because HIV prevention and testing services are not reaching the groups that need them most.
And the lack of optimal HIV medicines with suitable pediatric formulations has been a longstanding barrier to improving health outcomes for children living with HIV.
Going forward, access to services for vulnerable groups must be expanded through stronger community engagement, improved service delivery and tackling stigma and discrimination.
Twenty years ago, Nelson Mandela closed the AIDS conference by saying:
“This is, as I understand it, a gathering of human beings concerned about turning around one of the greatest threats humankind has faced.”
Those words from Madiba echoed through a generation of activists and policy makers alike and I say them today as a message to the world.
More than six months in, the case for national unity and global solidarity is undeniable.
To beat the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure that essential health services for diseases like HIV continue; we cannot afford any divisions.
I will say it again. National unity and global solidarity are more important than ever to defeat a common enemy, a virus that has taken the world hostage.
This is our only road out of this pandemic. I repeat national unity and global solidarity.
I thank you.
margarita25
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- Oct 10, 2012
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- 51,333
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Act Accelerator / COVAX Technical PC:
margarita25
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- Oct 10, 2012
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- 51,333
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WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 13 July 2020
13 July 2020
Source
Yesterday, 230,000 cases of COVID-19 were reported to WHO.
Almost 80% of those cases were reported from just 10 countries, and 50% come from just two countries.
Although the number of daily deaths remains relatively stable, there is a lot to be concerned about.
All countries are at risk of the virus, as you know, but not all countries have been affected in the same way.
There are roughly four situations playing out across the world at the moment.
The first situation is countries that were alert and aware – they prepared and responded rapidly and effectively to the first cases. As a result, they have so far avoided large outbreaks.
Several countries in the Mekong region, the Pacific, the Caribbean and Africa fit into that category.
Leaders of those countries took command of the emergency and communicated effectively with their populations about the measures that had to be taken.
They pursued a comprehensive strategy to find, isolate, test and care for cases, and to trace and quarantine contacts, and were able to suppress the virus.
The second situation is countries in which there was a major outbreak that was brought under control through a combination of strong leadership and populations adhering to key public health measures.
Many countries in Europe and elsewhere have demonstrated that it is possible to bring large outbreaks under control.
In both of these first two situations, where countries have effectively suppressed the virus, leaders are opening up their societies on a data-driven, step-by-step basis, with a comprehensive public health approach, backed by a strong health workforce and community buy-in.
The third situation we’re seeing is countries that overcame the first peak of the outbreak, but having eased restrictions, are now struggling with new peaks and accelerating cases.
In several countries across the world, we are now seeing dangerous increases in cases, and hospital wards filling up again.
It would appear that many countries are losing gains made as proven measures to reduce risk are not implemented or followed.
The fourth situation is those countries that are in the intense transmission phase of their outbreak.
We’re seeing this across the Americas, South Asia, and several countries in Africa.
The epicentre of the virus remains in the Americas, where more than 50% of the world’s cases have been recorded.
But we know from the first two situations that it’s never too late to bring the virus under control, even if there’s been explosive transmission.
In some cities and regions where transmission is intense, severe restrictions have been reinstated to bring the outbreak under control.
WHO is committed to working with all countries and all people to suppress transmission, reduce mortality, support communities to protect themselves and others, and support strong government leadership and coordination.
===
Let me blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction.
The virus remains public enemy number one, but the actions of many governments and people do not reflect this.
The only aim of the virus is to find people to infect.
Mixed messages from leaders are undermining the most critical ingredient of any response: trust.
If governments do not clearly communicate with their citizens and roll out a comprehensive strategy focused on suppressing transmission and saving lives;
If populations do not follow the basic public health principles of physical distancing, hand washing, wearing masks, coughing etiquette and staying at home when sick;
If the basics aren’t followed, there is only one way this pandemic is going to go.
It’s going to get worse and worse and worse.
But it does not have to be this way.
Every single leader, every single government and every single person can do their bit to break chains of transmission and end the collective suffering.
I am not saying it’s easy; it’s clearly not.
I know that many leaders are working in difficult circumstances.
I know that there are other health, economic, social and cultural challenges to weigh up.
Just today, the latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World was published, which estimates that almost 690 million people went hungry in 2019.
While it’s too soon to assess the full impact of COVID-19, the report estimates that 130 million more people may face chronic hunger by the end of this year.
There are no shortcuts out of this pandemic.
We all hope there will be an effective vaccine, but we need to focus on using the tools we have now to suppress transmission and save lives.
We need to reach a sustainable situation where we have adequate control of this virus without shutting down our lives entirely, or lurching from lockdown to lockdown; which has a hugely detrimental impact on societies.
===
I want to be straight with you: there will be no return to the “old normal” for the foreseeable future.
But there is a roadmap to a situation where we can control the disease and get on with our lives.
But this is going to require three things:
First, a focus on reducing mortality and suppressing transmission.
Second, an empowered, engaged community that takes individual behaviour measures in the interest of each other.
And third, we need strong government leadership and coordination of comprehensive strategies that are communicated clearly and consistently.
It can be done. It must be done. I have said it before and I will keep saying it.
No matter where a country is in its epidemic curve, it is never too late to take decisive action.
Implement the basics and work with community leaders and all stakeholders to deliver clear public health messages.
We weren’t prepared collectively, but we must use all the tools we have to bring this pandemic under control. And we need to do it right now.
Together, we must accelerate the science as quickly as possible, find joint solutions to COVID-19 and through solidarity build a cohesive global response.
Science, solutions and solidarity.
I thank you.”
Monday, July 13, 2020
Press briefings
(1 week ago from today)
13 July 2020
Source
- العربية
- 中文
- Français
- Русский
- Español
Yesterday, 230,000 cases of COVID-19 were reported to WHO.
Almost 80% of those cases were reported from just 10 countries, and 50% come from just two countries.
Although the number of daily deaths remains relatively stable, there is a lot to be concerned about.
All countries are at risk of the virus, as you know, but not all countries have been affected in the same way.
There are roughly four situations playing out across the world at the moment.
The first situation is countries that were alert and aware – they prepared and responded rapidly and effectively to the first cases. As a result, they have so far avoided large outbreaks.
Several countries in the Mekong region, the Pacific, the Caribbean and Africa fit into that category.
Leaders of those countries took command of the emergency and communicated effectively with their populations about the measures that had to be taken.
They pursued a comprehensive strategy to find, isolate, test and care for cases, and to trace and quarantine contacts, and were able to suppress the virus.
The second situation is countries in which there was a major outbreak that was brought under control through a combination of strong leadership and populations adhering to key public health measures.
Many countries in Europe and elsewhere have demonstrated that it is possible to bring large outbreaks under control.
In both of these first two situations, where countries have effectively suppressed the virus, leaders are opening up their societies on a data-driven, step-by-step basis, with a comprehensive public health approach, backed by a strong health workforce and community buy-in.
The third situation we’re seeing is countries that overcame the first peak of the outbreak, but having eased restrictions, are now struggling with new peaks and accelerating cases.
In several countries across the world, we are now seeing dangerous increases in cases, and hospital wards filling up again.
It would appear that many countries are losing gains made as proven measures to reduce risk are not implemented or followed.
The fourth situation is those countries that are in the intense transmission phase of their outbreak.
We’re seeing this across the Americas, South Asia, and several countries in Africa.
The epicentre of the virus remains in the Americas, where more than 50% of the world’s cases have been recorded.
But we know from the first two situations that it’s never too late to bring the virus under control, even if there’s been explosive transmission.
In some cities and regions where transmission is intense, severe restrictions have been reinstated to bring the outbreak under control.
WHO is committed to working with all countries and all people to suppress transmission, reduce mortality, support communities to protect themselves and others, and support strong government leadership and coordination.
===
Let me blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction.
The virus remains public enemy number one, but the actions of many governments and people do not reflect this.
The only aim of the virus is to find people to infect.
Mixed messages from leaders are undermining the most critical ingredient of any response: trust.
If governments do not clearly communicate with their citizens and roll out a comprehensive strategy focused on suppressing transmission and saving lives;
If populations do not follow the basic public health principles of physical distancing, hand washing, wearing masks, coughing etiquette and staying at home when sick;
If the basics aren’t followed, there is only one way this pandemic is going to go.
It’s going to get worse and worse and worse.
But it does not have to be this way.
Every single leader, every single government and every single person can do their bit to break chains of transmission and end the collective suffering.
I am not saying it’s easy; it’s clearly not.
I know that many leaders are working in difficult circumstances.
I know that there are other health, economic, social and cultural challenges to weigh up.
Just today, the latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World was published, which estimates that almost 690 million people went hungry in 2019.
While it’s too soon to assess the full impact of COVID-19, the report estimates that 130 million more people may face chronic hunger by the end of this year.
There are no shortcuts out of this pandemic.
We all hope there will be an effective vaccine, but we need to focus on using the tools we have now to suppress transmission and save lives.
We need to reach a sustainable situation where we have adequate control of this virus without shutting down our lives entirely, or lurching from lockdown to lockdown; which has a hugely detrimental impact on societies.
===
I want to be straight with you: there will be no return to the “old normal” for the foreseeable future.
But there is a roadmap to a situation where we can control the disease and get on with our lives.
But this is going to require three things:
First, a focus on reducing mortality and suppressing transmission.
Second, an empowered, engaged community that takes individual behaviour measures in the interest of each other.
And third, we need strong government leadership and coordination of comprehensive strategies that are communicated clearly and consistently.
It can be done. It must be done. I have said it before and I will keep saying it.
No matter where a country is in its epidemic curve, it is never too late to take decisive action.
Implement the basics and work with community leaders and all stakeholders to deliver clear public health messages.
We weren’t prepared collectively, but we must use all the tools we have to bring this pandemic under control. And we need to do it right now.
Together, we must accelerate the science as quickly as possible, find joint solutions to COVID-19 and through solidarity build a cohesive global response.
Science, solutions and solidarity.
I thank you.”
Monday, July 13, 2020
Press briefings
(1 week ago from today)
Last edited:
margarita25
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Link to consolidated post re: Vaccines, Act Accelerator, COVAX, technical update, and comments from WHO on vaccines:
Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #70
Coronavirus COVID-19 - Global Health Pandemic #70
margarita25
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Question re: United States / source:
Monday, July 13, 2020
Press briefings
Speaker 1: (14:51)
I’m going to put my question in French. The United States last week, officially declared that they are intending to withdraw from the WHO. My question then, is this. How does the WHO…
Speaker 2: (15:03)
My question then is this, how does the WHO envisage its future in that situation? Has Dr. Tedros called the president of the United States? Has this matter been discussed with him? Thank you.
Dr. Tedros: (15:18)
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that question. I think we have responded previously on the same question and we will respond maybe if there are additional issues from our side when we get the formal letter. We haven’t received the formal letter yet. Thank you.
Doctor Michael Ryan: (15:42)
And if I could maybe just add that the teams here at WHO, our teams around the world in 141 countries, our six regional offices, ourselves, our hundreds of collaborating centers around the world, our partners in GOARN, our partners in science all around the world. We are focused 100% on controlling this pandemic, reducing as the DG said. Reducing mortality, suppressing transmission, building strong community responses to this and assisting governments with strong coordination. That is our laser focus right now. We’re also dealing with many other situations around the world. We’re dealing with the situation in Syria which many of you have seen is deteriorating. We’re dealing with situations in Yemen. We’re dealing with other epidemics like Ebola again in Equateur Province of Congo, we’re dealing with plague in Ituri in Congo. We’re dealing with many, many, many emergencies around the world. That is our focus and we trust that we will be able to continue to work in scientific collaboration with our wonderful collaborators in the United States in the coming months and years.
Monday, July 13, 2020
Press briefings
Speaker 1: (14:51)
I’m going to put my question in French. The United States last week, officially declared that they are intending to withdraw from the WHO. My question then, is this. How does the WHO…
Speaker 2: (15:03)
My question then is this, how does the WHO envisage its future in that situation? Has Dr. Tedros called the president of the United States? Has this matter been discussed with him? Thank you.
Dr. Tedros: (15:18)
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that question. I think we have responded previously on the same question and we will respond maybe if there are additional issues from our side when we get the formal letter. We haven’t received the formal letter yet. Thank you.
Doctor Michael Ryan: (15:42)
And if I could maybe just add that the teams here at WHO, our teams around the world in 141 countries, our six regional offices, ourselves, our hundreds of collaborating centers around the world, our partners in GOARN, our partners in science all around the world. We are focused 100% on controlling this pandemic, reducing as the DG said. Reducing mortality, suppressing transmission, building strong community responses to this and assisting governments with strong coordination. That is our laser focus right now. We’re also dealing with many other situations around the world. We’re dealing with the situation in Syria which many of you have seen is deteriorating. We’re dealing with situations in Yemen. We’re dealing with other epidemics like Ebola again in Equateur Province of Congo, we’re dealing with plague in Ituri in Congo. We’re dealing with many, many, many emergencies around the world. That is our focus and we trust that we will be able to continue to work in scientific collaboration with our wonderful collaborators in the United States in the coming months and years.
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margarita25
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Question re: children and schools/ source
Monday, July 13, 2020
Press briefings
Christine: (22:36)
Hi, Christine Theodorou ABC News. I wanted to ask a question about transmission among children. From the last notes I have, the WHO reported children seem to be less affected, experienced mild disease and are less likely to show clinical symptoms. You had previously said that children are susceptible just as adults and can transmit, but from some of the household transmission studies, excuse me, we’re looking at, it was very rare that a child infects an adult. And you were trying to better understand when people are infectious, how people are infectious and how do you measure that. Today we’re seeing a report from Chief Health Officer in Victoria state, Australia, warning that extensive testing in the state revealed child to child transmissions are quote, more apparent than they first thought. And in the US as you know, there’s an intense debate that’s ongoing around school reopenings. we wanted to ask if there’s updated guidance from the WHO on child transmissions? Whether that be child to child, or child to adult. Thank you in advance.
Doctor Maria Van Kerkhove: (23:38)
So I can start and perhaps Mike would like to supplement. So this is a very important question. And this is one that has been on our radar from the beginning of course and I’m looking at transmission as well as severity. And so what you had said about children tend to be less affected in terms of being as cases, that is true, representing between one and 3%, in some countries up to 5% of the reported cases to WHO. There are some seroprevalent studies that are being conducted that are looking at antibody response in children. And there are a few studies that are coming out now. Again, they’re not all peer reviewed publications, but some of those are pre-print. And what we’re seeing from them is that children do seem to be, we need to break down what children mean. The youngest children under 10 years old for example, versus children over 10. And it depends on how the study broke down age. Some of them range from five to nine, some of them range from 10 to 14. But what we’re seeing is that children in the youngest age groups have a lower seroprevalence. And those that are above 10 seemed to have a similar seroprevalence to those that are among young adults and above 20 years old, which means that they can be infected, which we’ve said from the beginning, but they do tend to have more mild disease. In terms of transmission, there’s quite a lot that we still need to understand about transmission in children. Many of the schools in many of the countries that imposed these public health and social measures or so-called lockdown measures did include closing of schools, although not all did. And we’re learning from some countries as they’re opening up some of those restrictions, we have heard of some outbreaks in schools mainly among the older children. But again, there’s a lot that we don’t know about transmission among children.
With regards to schools and advice on schools, WHO has issued guidance on the safe running of schools and making sure that certain measures are in place. We’ve also issued guidance on considerations of when schools can reopen. And that takes into account a lot of different factors that decision makers need to take. Whether it relates to the transmission that is occurring in the local area or the catchment area of the schools, the type of school structure it has, the ability for the school to be able to implement the measures like physical distancing, hand washing, et cetera. And so there’s a number of considerations that need to take place. But as you highlighted, children do seem to be less affected but they can be infected and that is important. Our understanding of transmission in children is still limited, and we know that overall they tend to have more mild disease, but in some situations they can have severe disease and we have seen children that have died.
Doctor Michael Ryan: (26:37)
Yes. Thank you, Maria. I think that’s says it all. I think we’ve been around. If we cast our minds back over the last couple of months, we’ve had healthy debates around everything from longterm care facilities, to transmission in dormitories, to transmissions in airplanes, to transmission on public transport, healthcare settings, to workplace and now schools. And Maria is absolutely correct in that we don’t fully understand the full contribution of children to the overall epidemic. The fact remains that when community transmission exists and when community transmission is intense, children will be exposed to that virus and children will be part of the transmission cycle. They will be exposed, some will be infected, and they may infect others. What we don’t fully understand is the impact on those children in the long term. We know in the short term, they tend to have milder infections. We don’t know the impact in the long term, and we don’t know to what extent they pass that infection on and affect others. But we do know that that can happen.
So when we look at that and we can have the same issues when it comes to the workplace, and we talk about employees and the workplace, and we talk about longterm care facilities and health workers in the facilities and older people and visitors. And to what extent do visitors bring the disease in or to what extent do health workers participate in transmission. And all of this is in the setting of what’s happening in the community. And in communities where transmission has been effectively suppressed, where countries have been successful in driving down transmission of the disease across the board, then you reach a point where everything is safer. The problem we have in some countries right now is that it’s very difficult to determine the safety of any environment because there is just so much transmission going on that all potential environments in which people mix are essentially problematic. And that’s a problem.
We’ve all paid a heavy price. Countries around the world have gone into very serious movement restrictions, stay at home orders, in order to suppress the virus transmission. And as countries have opened up, in some countries, the suppression of the virus has been kept in place. Countries have opened up carefully, sequentially in a stepwise fashion and have strengthened their public health architecture and have strengthened their capacity to investigate clusters and suppress the disease and in some cases implement subnational or targeted measures at movement restriction or stay at home orders. And in that case, schools are part of that. So yes, there is an issue around how much, and to what extent children participate in transmission. There are real issues around how schools can be reopened safely. But the best and safest way to reopen schools is in the context of low community transmission that has been effectively suppressed by a broad based comprehensive strategy.
We can’t move from let’s deal with the schools, and then we all deal with that for a week or two, and then let’s deal with the workplace, or then let’s deal with infection in hospitals or longterm care facilities. This is playing Whac-A-Mole. We have got to focus on a comprehensive longterm strategy that focuses on everything at one time. We’ve got to chew gum and walk at the same time and we keep pulling ourselves down various rabbit holes. Schools are a hugely important part of this. They’re a huge-
… rabbit holes. Schools are as are a hugely important part of this. They’re a hugely important part of our social educational architecture, the baseline of our civilization. But we can’t turn schools into yet another political football in this game. It’s not fair on our children. So we have to look at this carefully in the light of the transmission, in any given country or any given setting. And we have to make decisions that are based on the best interests of our children, be it their educational or their health interests. And that must be based on data. That must be based on understanding the risks in the specific setting in which schools are. What is the community transmission and what are those risks? And my fear in this is that we create these political footballs that get kicked around the place and for me, we need to get back to what the director general has just spoken about.
Comprehensive strategies, sustained commitment to broad- based virus suppression. If we suppress the virus in our society, in our communities, then our schools can open safely. And there are many countries around the world in which schools are reopening, successfully and safely because countries have dealt with the real problem, community transmission. So I would advise us all to look carefully at schools. We will continue to. I think we have a technical advisory group meeting coming up, Maria might want to speak to that. We’re bringing experts together from all over the world once more, to look at how we manage and open schools in a safe and effective way, but please let us not turn this into yet another political football.
Doctor Maria Van Kerkhove: (31:42)
Let me add that we have a technical advisory group that’s been pulled together to advise on us on educational institutions, specifically around how we do this safely. And it’s a global collaboration. There’s a large number of scientists that are helping to advise us on this. We have our second meeting this week and that is something that we have specifically pulled together for this because it is such a complex issue and it is such an important issue for all of us.
Monday, July 13, 2020
Press briefings
Christine: (22:36)
Hi, Christine Theodorou ABC News. I wanted to ask a question about transmission among children. From the last notes I have, the WHO reported children seem to be less affected, experienced mild disease and are less likely to show clinical symptoms. You had previously said that children are susceptible just as adults and can transmit, but from some of the household transmission studies, excuse me, we’re looking at, it was very rare that a child infects an adult. And you were trying to better understand when people are infectious, how people are infectious and how do you measure that. Today we’re seeing a report from Chief Health Officer in Victoria state, Australia, warning that extensive testing in the state revealed child to child transmissions are quote, more apparent than they first thought. And in the US as you know, there’s an intense debate that’s ongoing around school reopenings. we wanted to ask if there’s updated guidance from the WHO on child transmissions? Whether that be child to child, or child to adult. Thank you in advance.
Doctor Maria Van Kerkhove: (23:38)
So I can start and perhaps Mike would like to supplement. So this is a very important question. And this is one that has been on our radar from the beginning of course and I’m looking at transmission as well as severity. And so what you had said about children tend to be less affected in terms of being as cases, that is true, representing between one and 3%, in some countries up to 5% of the reported cases to WHO. There are some seroprevalent studies that are being conducted that are looking at antibody response in children. And there are a few studies that are coming out now. Again, they’re not all peer reviewed publications, but some of those are pre-print. And what we’re seeing from them is that children do seem to be, we need to break down what children mean. The youngest children under 10 years old for example, versus children over 10. And it depends on how the study broke down age. Some of them range from five to nine, some of them range from 10 to 14. But what we’re seeing is that children in the youngest age groups have a lower seroprevalence. And those that are above 10 seemed to have a similar seroprevalence to those that are among young adults and above 20 years old, which means that they can be infected, which we’ve said from the beginning, but they do tend to have more mild disease. In terms of transmission, there’s quite a lot that we still need to understand about transmission in children. Many of the schools in many of the countries that imposed these public health and social measures or so-called lockdown measures did include closing of schools, although not all did. And we’re learning from some countries as they’re opening up some of those restrictions, we have heard of some outbreaks in schools mainly among the older children. But again, there’s a lot that we don’t know about transmission among children.
With regards to schools and advice on schools, WHO has issued guidance on the safe running of schools and making sure that certain measures are in place. We’ve also issued guidance on considerations of when schools can reopen. And that takes into account a lot of different factors that decision makers need to take. Whether it relates to the transmission that is occurring in the local area or the catchment area of the schools, the type of school structure it has, the ability for the school to be able to implement the measures like physical distancing, hand washing, et cetera. And so there’s a number of considerations that need to take place. But as you highlighted, children do seem to be less affected but they can be infected and that is important. Our understanding of transmission in children is still limited, and we know that overall they tend to have more mild disease, but in some situations they can have severe disease and we have seen children that have died.
Doctor Michael Ryan: (26:37)
Yes. Thank you, Maria. I think that’s says it all. I think we’ve been around. If we cast our minds back over the last couple of months, we’ve had healthy debates around everything from longterm care facilities, to transmission in dormitories, to transmissions in airplanes, to transmission on public transport, healthcare settings, to workplace and now schools. And Maria is absolutely correct in that we don’t fully understand the full contribution of children to the overall epidemic. The fact remains that when community transmission exists and when community transmission is intense, children will be exposed to that virus and children will be part of the transmission cycle. They will be exposed, some will be infected, and they may infect others. What we don’t fully understand is the impact on those children in the long term. We know in the short term, they tend to have milder infections. We don’t know the impact in the long term, and we don’t know to what extent they pass that infection on and affect others. But we do know that that can happen.
So when we look at that and we can have the same issues when it comes to the workplace, and we talk about employees and the workplace, and we talk about longterm care facilities and health workers in the facilities and older people and visitors. And to what extent do visitors bring the disease in or to what extent do health workers participate in transmission. And all of this is in the setting of what’s happening in the community. And in communities where transmission has been effectively suppressed, where countries have been successful in driving down transmission of the disease across the board, then you reach a point where everything is safer. The problem we have in some countries right now is that it’s very difficult to determine the safety of any environment because there is just so much transmission going on that all potential environments in which people mix are essentially problematic. And that’s a problem.
We’ve all paid a heavy price. Countries around the world have gone into very serious movement restrictions, stay at home orders, in order to suppress the virus transmission. And as countries have opened up, in some countries, the suppression of the virus has been kept in place. Countries have opened up carefully, sequentially in a stepwise fashion and have strengthened their public health architecture and have strengthened their capacity to investigate clusters and suppress the disease and in some cases implement subnational or targeted measures at movement restriction or stay at home orders. And in that case, schools are part of that. So yes, there is an issue around how much, and to what extent children participate in transmission. There are real issues around how schools can be reopened safely. But the best and safest way to reopen schools is in the context of low community transmission that has been effectively suppressed by a broad based comprehensive strategy.
We can’t move from let’s deal with the schools, and then we all deal with that for a week or two, and then let’s deal with the workplace, or then let’s deal with infection in hospitals or longterm care facilities. This is playing Whac-A-Mole. We have got to focus on a comprehensive longterm strategy that focuses on everything at one time. We’ve got to chew gum and walk at the same time and we keep pulling ourselves down various rabbit holes. Schools are a hugely important part of this. They’re a huge-
… rabbit holes. Schools are as are a hugely important part of this. They’re a hugely important part of our social educational architecture, the baseline of our civilization. But we can’t turn schools into yet another political football in this game. It’s not fair on our children. So we have to look at this carefully in the light of the transmission, in any given country or any given setting. And we have to make decisions that are based on the best interests of our children, be it their educational or their health interests. And that must be based on data. That must be based on understanding the risks in the specific setting in which schools are. What is the community transmission and what are those risks? And my fear in this is that we create these political footballs that get kicked around the place and for me, we need to get back to what the director general has just spoken about.
Comprehensive strategies, sustained commitment to broad- based virus suppression. If we suppress the virus in our society, in our communities, then our schools can open safely. And there are many countries around the world in which schools are reopening, successfully and safely because countries have dealt with the real problem, community transmission. So I would advise us all to look carefully at schools. We will continue to. I think we have a technical advisory group meeting coming up, Maria might want to speak to that. We’re bringing experts together from all over the world once more, to look at how we manage and open schools in a safe and effective way, but please let us not turn this into yet another political football.
Doctor Maria Van Kerkhove: (31:42)
Let me add that we have a technical advisory group that’s been pulled together to advise on us on educational institutions, specifically around how we do this safely. And it’s a global collaboration. There’s a large number of scientists that are helping to advise us on this. We have our second meeting this week and that is something that we have specifically pulled together for this because it is such a complex issue and it is such an important issue for all of us.
Last edited:
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Live Q&A on COVID-19 with Dr Mike Ryan and Dr Maria Van Kerkhove. Ask your questions!
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Note July 30: Dr Swaminathan, around 10:00ish iirc, makes some important comments re: Act Accelerator and COVAX in response to a reporter’s question re: distribution.
Press briefings
Press briefings
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Live: Lester Holt Moderates WHO Panel | NBC News
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CDC:
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Care for Children
Updated Aug. 17, 2020
Summary of Recent Changes
Revisions were made on August 14, 2020 to reflect new evidence about COVID-19 in children.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Care for Children
Updated Aug. 17, 2020
Summary of Recent Changes
Revisions were made on August 14, 2020 to reflect new evidence about COVID-19 in children.
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WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 6 August 2020
Aspen Security Forum/WHO Press Briefing
6 August 2020
Distinguished guests,
Dear colleagues and friends,
It is an honour to partner with the Aspen Security Forum for our regular press conference.
I want to extend my sincerest thanks to Aspen and NBC for inviting Dr. Mike Ryan, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove and I to speak with you today.
The events of the last seven months are a tragic reminder of the insecurity and instability that disease can cause.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our world.
It has stress tested our political, economic, cultural and social infrastructure.
And found us wanting.
It has pushed the limits of health systems both weak and strong, leaving no country untouched.
It has humbled all of us.
The world spends billions every year preparing for potential terrorist attacks but we've learned lessons the hard way that unless we invest in pandemic preparedness and the climate crisis, we leave ourselves open to enormous harm.
===
Since WHO was created over seven decades ago, we have worked to galvanise collective international public health action to build a healthier and safer future for humanity.
From ending smallpox, to bringing polio to the brink of eradication; from rolling out treatment for HIV, TB and malaria to millions of people across the world, to responding to hundreds of emergencies.
Building up all health systems and ensuring health for all is our best shot at delivering on the goal of global health security.
Fifteen years ago, the global community came together and adopted the International Health Regulations (2005).
Its implementation by 196 state parties was a major step in the coordination of international action to enhance global health security.
Following WHO being notified of an atypical strain of pneumonia circulating in Wuhan Province, China; the International Health Regulations was triggered and the world was subsequently informed of the outbreak in early January.
The genome was mapped within the first week of January.
In the second week of January, it was publicly shared and WHO published how to build a PCR test for COVID-19 from our partner lab in Germany.
In the third week, WHO identified and began contracting for validated production of quality PCR tests.
And by the first week of February, WHO began shipping tests to over 150 labs around the world, which enabled the world to track and trace the virus around the world quickly.
And it was under the IHR – International Health Regulations – that WHO declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January – WHO’s highest health security alert under international law.
At that time, there were fewer than 100 cases and no deaths outside of China.
Today, more than 18.5 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported to WHO and seven hundred thousand lives have been lost.
No country has been spared. Low, middle and high-income countries have all been hit hard. The Americas remain the current epicentre of the virus and have been particularly hit hard.
Just three countries have reported over half of all cases.
No single country can fight this virus alone.
Its existence anywhere puts lives and livelihoods at risk everywhere.
It’s never too late to turn outbreaks around and many countries have done just that. It’s never too late to turn the situation around.
Our best way forward is to stick with science, solutions and solidarity and together we can overcome this pandemic.
===
COVID-19 has also exposed how misinformation poses one of the greatest security threats of our time.
Misinformation can spread faster than the virus itself.
Since the beginning of this pandemic, WHO has been working to address misinformation.
We’ve worked with all major tech companies to counter myths and rumour with reliable, evidence-based advice.
Last month, WHO brought experts together from across the world to hold the first conference on how best to tackle the COVID-19 infodemic.
Through our daily situation reports and regular media engagements WHO offices have kept the world informed. Myself, Maria and Mike have ourselves done more than 90 press briefings.
We have on a weekly basis, briefed our Member States to present the latest scientific knowledge, answer their questions, and to share and learn from their experiences with COVID-19.
WHO will continue to support everyone, everywhere and work with leaders, communities and individuals to foster global solidarity, suppress the virus and save lives and livelihoods.
===
Even as we fight this pandemic, we just ended the second largest and probably the most difficult and complicated Ebola outbreak in history in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
We are applied lessons from previous outbreaks and innovations developed and researched ethically in conflict situations to bring the deadly disease under control.
And just this week our team in Lebanon is responding to the large explosion that has killed more than 130 people and injured at least 5,000.
Whether it’s COVID-19, disease outbreaks or responding to humanitarian and natural disasters, all are intrinsically linked to global health security.
===
While health has often been viewed as a cost, the first coronavirus pandemic in history has shown how critical health investment is to national security.
And universal health coverage is essential to our collective global health security.
Building back stronger health systems will require political will, resources and technical expertise in high- and low-income countries alike.
That is why WHO’s highest priority is to support all countries to strengthen their health systems so that everyone, everywhere can access quality health services when they need them.
===
COVID-19 has already taken away so much.
We must seize this moment to come together in national unity and global solidarity to control COVID-19, address antimicrobial resistance and the climate crisis.
For all our differences, we are one human race sharing the same planet and our security is interdependent - no country will be safe, until we’re all safe.
I urge all leaders to choose the path of cooperation and act now to end this pandemic!
It’s not just the smart choice, it's the right choice and it’s the only choice we have
I thank you so much once again.
WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 6 August 2020
Aspen Security Forum/WHO Press Briefing
6 August 2020
- العربية
- 中文
- Français
- Русский
- Español
Distinguished guests,
Dear colleagues and friends,
It is an honour to partner with the Aspen Security Forum for our regular press conference.
I want to extend my sincerest thanks to Aspen and NBC for inviting Dr. Mike Ryan, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove and I to speak with you today.
The events of the last seven months are a tragic reminder of the insecurity and instability that disease can cause.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our world.
It has stress tested our political, economic, cultural and social infrastructure.
And found us wanting.
It has pushed the limits of health systems both weak and strong, leaving no country untouched.
It has humbled all of us.
The world spends billions every year preparing for potential terrorist attacks but we've learned lessons the hard way that unless we invest in pandemic preparedness and the climate crisis, we leave ourselves open to enormous harm.
===
Since WHO was created over seven decades ago, we have worked to galvanise collective international public health action to build a healthier and safer future for humanity.
From ending smallpox, to bringing polio to the brink of eradication; from rolling out treatment for HIV, TB and malaria to millions of people across the world, to responding to hundreds of emergencies.
Building up all health systems and ensuring health for all is our best shot at delivering on the goal of global health security.
Fifteen years ago, the global community came together and adopted the International Health Regulations (2005).
Its implementation by 196 state parties was a major step in the coordination of international action to enhance global health security.
Following WHO being notified of an atypical strain of pneumonia circulating in Wuhan Province, China; the International Health Regulations was triggered and the world was subsequently informed of the outbreak in early January.
The genome was mapped within the first week of January.
In the second week of January, it was publicly shared and WHO published how to build a PCR test for COVID-19 from our partner lab in Germany.
In the third week, WHO identified and began contracting for validated production of quality PCR tests.
And by the first week of February, WHO began shipping tests to over 150 labs around the world, which enabled the world to track and trace the virus around the world quickly.
And it was under the IHR – International Health Regulations – that WHO declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January – WHO’s highest health security alert under international law.
At that time, there were fewer than 100 cases and no deaths outside of China.
Today, more than 18.5 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported to WHO and seven hundred thousand lives have been lost.
No country has been spared. Low, middle and high-income countries have all been hit hard. The Americas remain the current epicentre of the virus and have been particularly hit hard.
Just three countries have reported over half of all cases.
No single country can fight this virus alone.
Its existence anywhere puts lives and livelihoods at risk everywhere.
It’s never too late to turn outbreaks around and many countries have done just that. It’s never too late to turn the situation around.
Our best way forward is to stick with science, solutions and solidarity and together we can overcome this pandemic.
===
COVID-19 has also exposed how misinformation poses one of the greatest security threats of our time.
Misinformation can spread faster than the virus itself.
Since the beginning of this pandemic, WHO has been working to address misinformation.
We’ve worked with all major tech companies to counter myths and rumour with reliable, evidence-based advice.
Last month, WHO brought experts together from across the world to hold the first conference on how best to tackle the COVID-19 infodemic.
Through our daily situation reports and regular media engagements WHO offices have kept the world informed. Myself, Maria and Mike have ourselves done more than 90 press briefings.
We have on a weekly basis, briefed our Member States to present the latest scientific knowledge, answer their questions, and to share and learn from their experiences with COVID-19.
WHO will continue to support everyone, everywhere and work with leaders, communities and individuals to foster global solidarity, suppress the virus and save lives and livelihoods.
===
Even as we fight this pandemic, we just ended the second largest and probably the most difficult and complicated Ebola outbreak in history in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
We are applied lessons from previous outbreaks and innovations developed and researched ethically in conflict situations to bring the deadly disease under control.
And just this week our team in Lebanon is responding to the large explosion that has killed more than 130 people and injured at least 5,000.
Whether it’s COVID-19, disease outbreaks or responding to humanitarian and natural disasters, all are intrinsically linked to global health security.
===
While health has often been viewed as a cost, the first coronavirus pandemic in history has shown how critical health investment is to national security.
And universal health coverage is essential to our collective global health security.
Building back stronger health systems will require political will, resources and technical expertise in high- and low-income countries alike.
That is why WHO’s highest priority is to support all countries to strengthen their health systems so that everyone, everywhere can access quality health services when they need them.
===
COVID-19 has already taken away so much.
We must seize this moment to come together in national unity and global solidarity to control COVID-19, address antimicrobial resistance and the climate crisis.
For all our differences, we are one human race sharing the same planet and our security is interdependent - no country will be safe, until we’re all safe.
I urge all leaders to choose the path of cooperation and act now to end this pandemic!
It’s not just the smart choice, it's the right choice and it’s the only choice we have
I thank you so much once again.
WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 6 August 2020
margarita25
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WHO Briefing / Aug 10th:
WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 10 August 2020
10 August 2020
This week we’ll reach 20 million registered cases of COVID-19 and 750,000 deaths.
Behind these statistics is a great deal of pain and suffering.
Every life lost matters.
I know many of you are grieving and that this is a difficult moment for the world.
But I want to be clear, there are green shoots of hope and no matter where a country, a region, a city or a town is – it’s never too late to turn the outbreak around.
There are two essential elements to addressing the pandemic effectively:
Leaders must step up to take action and citizens need to embrace new measures.
Some countries in the Mekong Region, New Zealand, Rwanda, and many island states across the Caribbean and the Pacific were able to suppress the virus early.
New Zealand is seen as a global exemplar and over the weekend Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern celebrated 100 days with no community transmission, while stressing the need to remain cautious.
Rwanda’s progress is due to a similar combination of strong leadership, universal health coverage, well-supported health workers and clear public health communications.
All testing and treatment for COVID-19 is free in Rwanda, so there are no financial barriers to people getting tested.
And when people test positive for the virus, they’re isolated and health workers then visit every potential contact and test them also.
Getting the basics right provides a clear picture of where the virus is and the necessary targeted actions to suppress transmission and save lives.
This means that where there are cases, the government can quickly implement targeted measures and focus control efforts where they are needed most.
Other countries like France, Germany, the Republic of Korea, Spain, Italy, and the UK had major outbreaks of the virus but when they took action, they were able to suppress it.
Many countries globally are now using all the tools at their disposal to tackle any new spikes.
Over the last few days, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson put areas of northern England under stay at home notifications, as clusters of cases were identified.
In France, President Macron introduced compulsory masking in busy outdoor spaces of Paris in response to an increase in cases.
Strong and precise measures like these, in combination with utilising every tool at our disposal are key to preventing any resurgence in disease and allowing societies to be reopened safely.
And even in countries where transmission is intense, it can be brought under control by applying an all of government, all of society response.
Chains of transmission have been broken by combination of rapid case identification, comprehensive contact tracing, adequate clinical care for patients, physical distancing, mask wearing, regular cleaning of hands and coughing away from others.
Whether countries or regions have successfully eliminated the virus, suppressed transmission to a low level, or are still in the midst of a major outbreak; now is the time to do it all, invest in the basics of public health and we can save both lives and livelihoods.
In the countries that have done this successfully, they are using a risk based approach to reopen segments of societies, including schools.
And as they do so, they must remain vigilant for potential clusters of the virus.
We all want to see schools safely reopened but we also need to ensure that students, staff and faculty are safe. The foundation for this is adequate control of transmission at the community.
My message is crystal clear: suppress, suppress, suppress the virus.
If we suppress the virus effectively, we can safely open up societies.
===
As countries work to suppress COVID-19, we must further accelerate our work to rapidly develop and equitably distribute the additional tools we need to stop this pandemic.
Just over three months ago we launched the ACT Accelerator as the fastest and most effective way to do this.
It is the only end-to-end, global solution that combines public and private sector expertise in research and development, manufacturing, procurement and delivery for the tools needed to address the pandemic’s cause.
The ACT-Accelerator has already harnessed the international public health ecosystem in a unique way of working, with early proof of its potential.
The accelerator supported vaccines are in Phase 2/3 trials.
A Global Vaccines Facility is engaging over 160 countries.
The first therapy for severe COVID – dexamethasone - is in scale-up.
Dozens of other promising therapies are under analysis.
Over 50 diagnostics are in evaluation, including potentially game-changing rapid antigen tests.
And a comprehensive framework for allocating these scarce tools for greatest global impact, is under consultation.
The coming 3 months present a crucial window of opportunity to scale-up the work of the ACT-Accelerator for global impact.
However, to exploit this window we have to fundamentally scale up the way we are financing the ACT-Accelerator and prioritize the use of new tools.
There is a vast global gap between our ambition for the ACT-Accelerator and the amount of funds that have been committed.
While we’re grateful for those that have made contributions, we’re only 10% of the way to funding the billions required to realise the promise of the ACT Accelerator.
And this is only part of the global investment needed to ensure everyone everywhere can access the tools.
For the vaccines alone, over $100 billion dollars will be needed.
This sounds like lot of money and it is.
But it’s small in comparison to the 10 trillion dollars that have already been invested by G20 countries in fiscal stimulus to deal with the consequences of the pandemic so far.
===
I would like to close by saying a few words about the explosion in Lebanon that last Tuesday killed over 150 people, injured more than 6,000 and left over 300,000 people homeless.
To the people of Beirut, the health workers and emergency workers on the ground: our thoughts are with you and we will continue to support you.
From our strategic stockpile in Dubai, WHO immediately sent surgical and major trauma supplies. We released funds from the contingency fund for emergencies.
And our staff are on the ground are supporting the assessment of the impact on the health sector with Lebanese and other UN partners.
We are shipping $1.7 million dollars worth of PPE items to support COVID-19 and humanitarian supplies that were destroyed by the blast.
We are also working closely with national health authorities to enhance trauma care, including through the deployment and coordination of qualified emergency medical teams.
We’re also mitigating the COVID-19 impact, addressing psychosocial needs and facilitating the rapid restoration of damaged health facilities.
We have issued an appeal for $76 million US dollars and ask for your solidarity and support to the Lebanese people.
I thank you.
WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 10 August 2020
10 August 2020
- العربية
- 中文
- Français
- Русский
- Español
This week we’ll reach 20 million registered cases of COVID-19 and 750,000 deaths.
Behind these statistics is a great deal of pain and suffering.
Every life lost matters.
I know many of you are grieving and that this is a difficult moment for the world.
But I want to be clear, there are green shoots of hope and no matter where a country, a region, a city or a town is – it’s never too late to turn the outbreak around.
There are two essential elements to addressing the pandemic effectively:
Leaders must step up to take action and citizens need to embrace new measures.
Some countries in the Mekong Region, New Zealand, Rwanda, and many island states across the Caribbean and the Pacific were able to suppress the virus early.
New Zealand is seen as a global exemplar and over the weekend Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern celebrated 100 days with no community transmission, while stressing the need to remain cautious.
Rwanda’s progress is due to a similar combination of strong leadership, universal health coverage, well-supported health workers and clear public health communications.
All testing and treatment for COVID-19 is free in Rwanda, so there are no financial barriers to people getting tested.
And when people test positive for the virus, they’re isolated and health workers then visit every potential contact and test them also.
Getting the basics right provides a clear picture of where the virus is and the necessary targeted actions to suppress transmission and save lives.
This means that where there are cases, the government can quickly implement targeted measures and focus control efforts where they are needed most.
Other countries like France, Germany, the Republic of Korea, Spain, Italy, and the UK had major outbreaks of the virus but when they took action, they were able to suppress it.
Many countries globally are now using all the tools at their disposal to tackle any new spikes.
Over the last few days, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson put areas of northern England under stay at home notifications, as clusters of cases were identified.
In France, President Macron introduced compulsory masking in busy outdoor spaces of Paris in response to an increase in cases.
Strong and precise measures like these, in combination with utilising every tool at our disposal are key to preventing any resurgence in disease and allowing societies to be reopened safely.
And even in countries where transmission is intense, it can be brought under control by applying an all of government, all of society response.
Chains of transmission have been broken by combination of rapid case identification, comprehensive contact tracing, adequate clinical care for patients, physical distancing, mask wearing, regular cleaning of hands and coughing away from others.
Whether countries or regions have successfully eliminated the virus, suppressed transmission to a low level, or are still in the midst of a major outbreak; now is the time to do it all, invest in the basics of public health and we can save both lives and livelihoods.
In the countries that have done this successfully, they are using a risk based approach to reopen segments of societies, including schools.
And as they do so, they must remain vigilant for potential clusters of the virus.
We all want to see schools safely reopened but we also need to ensure that students, staff and faculty are safe. The foundation for this is adequate control of transmission at the community.
My message is crystal clear: suppress, suppress, suppress the virus.
If we suppress the virus effectively, we can safely open up societies.
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As countries work to suppress COVID-19, we must further accelerate our work to rapidly develop and equitably distribute the additional tools we need to stop this pandemic.
Just over three months ago we launched the ACT Accelerator as the fastest and most effective way to do this.
It is the only end-to-end, global solution that combines public and private sector expertise in research and development, manufacturing, procurement and delivery for the tools needed to address the pandemic’s cause.
The ACT-Accelerator has already harnessed the international public health ecosystem in a unique way of working, with early proof of its potential.
The accelerator supported vaccines are in Phase 2/3 trials.
A Global Vaccines Facility is engaging over 160 countries.
The first therapy for severe COVID – dexamethasone - is in scale-up.
Dozens of other promising therapies are under analysis.
Over 50 diagnostics are in evaluation, including potentially game-changing rapid antigen tests.
And a comprehensive framework for allocating these scarce tools for greatest global impact, is under consultation.
The coming 3 months present a crucial window of opportunity to scale-up the work of the ACT-Accelerator for global impact.
However, to exploit this window we have to fundamentally scale up the way we are financing the ACT-Accelerator and prioritize the use of new tools.
There is a vast global gap between our ambition for the ACT-Accelerator and the amount of funds that have been committed.
While we’re grateful for those that have made contributions, we’re only 10% of the way to funding the billions required to realise the promise of the ACT Accelerator.
And this is only part of the global investment needed to ensure everyone everywhere can access the tools.
For the vaccines alone, over $100 billion dollars will be needed.
This sounds like lot of money and it is.
But it’s small in comparison to the 10 trillion dollars that have already been invested by G20 countries in fiscal stimulus to deal with the consequences of the pandemic so far.
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I would like to close by saying a few words about the explosion in Lebanon that last Tuesday killed over 150 people, injured more than 6,000 and left over 300,000 people homeless.
To the people of Beirut, the health workers and emergency workers on the ground: our thoughts are with you and we will continue to support you.
From our strategic stockpile in Dubai, WHO immediately sent surgical and major trauma supplies. We released funds from the contingency fund for emergencies.
And our staff are on the ground are supporting the assessment of the impact on the health sector with Lebanese and other UN partners.
We are shipping $1.7 million dollars worth of PPE items to support COVID-19 and humanitarian supplies that were destroyed by the blast.
We are also working closely with national health authorities to enhance trauma care, including through the deployment and coordination of qualified emergency medical teams.
We’re also mitigating the COVID-19 impact, addressing psychosocial needs and facilitating the rapid restoration of damaged health facilities.
We have issued an appeal for $76 million US dollars and ask for your solidarity and support to the Lebanese people.
I thank you.
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margarita25
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