The World Health Organization, WHO has expressed concerns as the highest number the novel coronavirus has been recorded in the past 24 hours.
According to WHO, 106,000 new cases of the infections were recorded in one day which translates into the most in a single day since the outbreak began. This pushes the total number of global infections to about 5 million cases.
“We still have a long way to go in this pandemic. We are very concerned about rising cases in low and middle-income countries” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference.
Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies program, said: “We will soon reach the tragic milestone of 5 million cases”
Recall that several countries in the world are beginning to lift lockdown restrictions and have begun returning to normal life, despite experts warning that many lack the systems to stop the second wave of Covid-19 infections
In another development, WHO has come under fire from U.S. President Donald Trump, who accuses it of having mishandled the outbreak and of favoring China, where the virus is believed to have emerged late last year.
This week Trump threatened to withdraw from the WHO and permanently withhold funding.
Tedros said he was committed to accountability and would carry out a review into the response to the pandemic. Such a review was demanded by member states in a resolution this week that was passed by consensus, although the United States expressed reservations about some elements of it.
“I said it time and time again that WHO calls for accountability more than anyone. It has to be done and when it’s done it has to be a comprehensive one,” Tedros said of the review while declining to say when it would start.
Ryan said such assessments are normally conducted after an emergency is over.
“I for one would prefer, right now, to get on with doing the job of emergency response, of epidemic control, of developing and distributing vaccines, of improving our surveillance, of saving lives and distributing essential PPE to workers and finding medical oxygen for people in fragile settings, reducing the impact of this disease on refugees and migrants,” he said.
Tedros said he had long been looking for other sources of funding for the WHO, saying its $2.3 billion budget was “very, very small” for a global agency, around that of a medium-sized hospital in the developed world.
