Coronavirus cases reaching record numbers worldwide are not simply the outcome of more nations screening, the World Health Organization stated Monday.
“We do not believe that this is a testing phenomenon,” Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s emergency situations program, stated at a press conference at the company’s Geneva head office.
“Clearly when you take a look at the health center admissions, [they] are likewise increasing in a variety of nations and deaths are likewise increasing. They’re not due to increased screening per se. So there certainly is a shift in the sense that the infection is now extremely well developed on a worldwide level,” he stated.
On Sunday, the variety of brand-new cases reported to the WHO leapt by more than 183,000, “easily” the most in a single day up until now, WHO authorities stated.
In the U.S., the coronavirus continues to spread out throughout parts of the nation, now with more than 2.2 million cases since Monday, according to information assembled by Johns Hopkins University. As of Sunday, the U.S. seven-day average of brand-new Covid-19 cases increased more than 24% compared to a week earlier, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins information. Cases are growing by 5% or more in 25 specifies throughout the U.S., consisting of Arizona, Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. Coronavirus hospitalizations are on the increase also.
In current weeks, some state and federal leaders have actually minimized the current increase in cases and hospitalizations throughout the U.S., connecting it to a boost in screening. On Saturday, President Donald Trump stated he asked authorities to “slow the testing down,” restating his claims that more screening was the factor the U.S. has the most cases on the planet.
Coronavirus “testing is a double-edged sword,” Trump stated at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “We have tested 25 million people by now, which is probably 20 million people more than anybody else. Germany has done a lot; South Korea has done a lot. But here’s the bad part: when you do testing to that extent, you will find more cases!”
The WHO acknowledged Monday that numbers are likewise increasing because “the epidemic is developing in a number of populous countries at the same time and across the whole world.”
“So from that perspective a large number of countries are contributing to that overall increase,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Brazil, with almost 55,000 brand-new infections, saw the biggest variety of cases reported, followed by the U.S., according to the WHO.
Ryan stated there is still a fairly low test per population rate in Brazil and the positivity rate for screening is still rather high.
“I believe the positivity rate was 31% for Brazil, so that generally means that there are probably more cases out there that aren’t being reported but what we tend to see is that positivity rate dropping usually down to 5% or less in countries that are detecting all of their cases and they’re in effect over-testing,” he stated.
“So from that perspective we would say that this trend or these large number of cases are not reflective of exhaustive testing but, as I said, probably underestimate the actual number of cases,” he stated.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated all nations deal with “a delicate balance between protecting their people while minimizing the social and economic damage.”
“It’s not a choice between lives and livelihoods. Countries can do both,” he stated.
— CNBC’s Jasmine Kim added to this report.
