With 1 million cases in 8 days, WHO warns of pandemic acceleration

The pandemic of Covid-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus, "continues to accelerate" in the world, with one million cases recorded in just eight days, warned on Monday (22) the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
"We know that the pandemic is much more than a health crisis, it is an economic, social and, in many countries, political crisis. Its effects will be felt for decades," Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a virtual conference organized by Dubai.
The WHO director's warning comes as several countries enter a phase of easing containment to reactivate their economies.
Last week, the WHO director called this new phase "dangerous," noting that despite the need to put an end to restrictions, the virus continued with "rapid spread" and remained "deadly."
"It took more than three months to reach the first million cases recorded. The last million contagion happened in just eight days," Tedros said.
The WHO director also urged governments to prepare for future pandemics that can happen "in any country at any time and kill millions of people because we are not prepared."
"We don't know where or when the next pandemic will happen, but we do know that it will have a terrible impact on world life and economy," warned Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
So far, the pandemic of the new coronavirus has killed 468,724 people worldwide, according to the Johns Hopkins University survey at 9:45 a.m. on Monday. Covid-19 was first detected in December in China.
The most affected countries are the United States (119,977 dead), Brazil (50,951), the United Kingdom (42,717), Italy (34,634) and France (29,643), also according to data from the American University Johns Hopkins at 9:45 a.m. on Monday.
Brazil has more than one million cases of Covid-19 and South America is the current epicenter of the pandemic, with 20,000 deaths in Mexico, more than 8,000 in Peru and more than 1,000 in Argentina.