Infections Across World Accelerating Faster Than Ever: WHO Special Envoy

Dr David Nabarro, who is a “Special Envoy” of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Director-General on the Covid-19 crisis, has warned that the majority of the world is heading towards a “very very dark period”.

It has been more than a year since the WHO declared the novel coronavirus caused a health crisis a "pandemic". But the overall situation around the world has hardly changed.

The SARS-CoV-2 caused disease, Covid-19, first emerged in China’s Wuhan. When a lockdown was imposed in the country, the virus began to spread across the European countries.

Later, when a lockdown was in effect in Europe, the pathogen chose a new epicentre—the Unites States of America.

Now in India, the Covid-19 situation has become very concerning and healthcare facilities are struggling to deal with a massive number of patients during the second wave of the pandemic.

India reported over 401,000 new coronavirus cases on 8 May.

Meanwhile, Dr Nabarro, who was nominated as the candidate for WHO Director-General position in 2017, said that infections across the world are now “accelerating faster than ever”.

He told BBC Radio 4’s “World At One” programme that the coronavirus pandemic is at a “fearsome” stage.

According to him, there are only a few countries that can demonstrate they have got much lower levels of Covid-19 and “they are actually feeling that they are recovering”.

“[But] the majority of the world is heading into a very, very dark period,” he added.

While explaining the reason behind such a comment, Dr Nabarro said that it is because of the lack of data.

According to the expert, more and more the novel coronavirus caused disease is spreading in many places where testing is not available.

“So, the numbers that we have we know are a major underestimate,” he said.

He also added that “It is bigger than ever, it is fiercer than ever and it is causing more distress than ever – this is a bad phase.”

Dr Nabarro warned that the “evolving” novel coronavirus will be surging in several parts of the world.

While some countries like Israel and the United Kingdom are believed to have passed the worst of their Covid-19 crisis, but some other nations are now seeing explosions of infections.

While India is witnessing the worst phase of the pandemic, Cyprus also saw a massive spike in cases in April as well as Laos, Nepal and Thailand.

To The World Leaders

Considering the current pandemic situation around the world, Dr Nabarro has urged all the global leaders to look at Covid-19 vaccine distribution as a “world issue”.

He said: "From my perspective, what you do with a scarce preventive action like a vaccine is that you give it to the people who need it the most, you give it to the people who are most at risk and you have to look at the issue as a world issue.”

“It doesn’t work if you just say we will treat individual countries separately,” the expert added.