The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak sparked by the coronavirus in China as a global emergency on Thursday, after the number of cases spiked more than tenfold in a week, while the death toll rose to 213.<\/p>\n
This developed as China’s health commission reported on Friday that the confirmed cases of infection have reached 9,692.<\/p>\n
Another 102,000 people were also reportedly under medical observation with possible symptoms of the respiratory ailment.<\/p>\n
The UN health agency defines an international emergency as an “extraordinary event” that constitutes a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.<\/p>\n
China first informed WHO about cases of the new virus in late December.<\/p>\n
Eighteen other countries have since reported cases, as scientists race to understand how exactly the virus is spreading and how severe it is.<\/p>\n
Experts say there is significant evidence the virus is spreading among people in China and have noted with concern instances in other countries – including the United States, France, Japan, Germany, Canada, South Korea and Vietnam – where there have also been isolated cases of human-to-human transmission.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted the worrisome spread of the virus between people outside China.<\/p>\n
“The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China but because of what is happening in other countries,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Our greatest concern is the potential for this virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems which are ill-prepared to deal with it.”<\/p>\n
“This declaration is not a vote of non-confidence in China,” he said. “On the contrary, WHO continues to have the confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak sparked by the coronavirus in China as a global emergency on Thursday, after the number of cases spiked more than tenfold in a week, while the death toll rose to 213. This developed as China’s health commission reported on Friday that the confirmed cases of infection have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"better_featured_image":{"id":81165,"alt_text":"","caption":"Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is an Ethiopian politician, academic, and public-health authority who has been Director-General of the World Health Organization since 2017. ","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":876,"file":"2020\/01\/20_tedros.jpg","filesize":98872,"sizes":{},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"post":81164,"source_url":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/20_tedros.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81166,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81164\/revisions\/81166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}