The virus is still circulating in the world: WHO

The United States, Brazil, and India extremely affected, WHO “worried” for Europe.

“As long as the Covid-19 circulates, everyone is in danger”, warned Thursday the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “It is not because the number of cases is low where you live that you can lower your guard,” he added during a press briefing.

The warning comes as the UN agency sees a surge in cases after rallies. If the Covid-19 seems to be marking time in several regions of the world, the epidemic continues to spread across the planet, with more than 15 million cases reported and nearly 630,000 deaths recorded on Thursday.

According to the WHO, half of these cases come from only three countries: the United States, where the threshold of 4 million has just been crossed, Brazil (2.2 million), and India (1.5 million).

The situation is most worrying in the American continent, where more than 8 million people have been infected. In the United States, the million additional cases in just two weeks (against one month to reduce the contamination threshold from 2 to 3 million) led Donald Trump to recognize the seriousness of the situation.

“It will surely get worse before it gets better. I don’t like to say that but that’s how it is ”, he confessed before recommending, for the first time, the wearing of the mask.

A call that obviously did not echo in Brasília, where the president, Jair Bolsonaro, tested positive for Covid-19 for the third time, was seen on Thursday discussing, without a mask, with sweepers in the vicinity of his residence. The day before, Brazil recorded more than 1,200 deaths linked to the virus, the second in the world – after the US – of the most bereaved countries for this day.

The European branch of the WHO has expressed “concern” Friday, the Covid-19 resurgence in some countries of Europe, where the threshold of 3 million cases has just been crossed.

Under the threat of a second wave, several countries of the Old Continent harden their tone. The inhabitants of the metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona (Spain), of several districts of the region of Lisbon (Portugal) or of the city of Leicester (England) are thus called upon to stay at home. Belgium, where the number of new infections increased by 91% in one week, has decided to make the mask mandatory in all places with high traffic, including outdoors. The United Kingdom, which holds the sad European record of 45,000 deaths has also decided to impose the wearing of masks in stores and supermarkets since Thursday.

In Africa, where the pandemic arrived later than elsewhere, the number of patients is growing exponentially. And it is South Africa that causes the most concern. A nearly 60% rise in the total number of natural deaths in recent weeks suggests that the death toll from Covid-19 is in fact much higher than official data indicates. “South Africa is in fifth place in the world for the number of confirmed cases, and is home to more than half of all cases in Africa,” said the president of the country, Cyril Ramaphosa.