'Does this virus have pandemic potential?' Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday. 'Absolutely, it has. Are we there yet? From our assessment, not yet.'
Health experts have been warning that a pandemic declaration could be looming, with the disease having spread to so many countries that it's no longer possible to contain it.
"We need to start to shift our thinking from containment of the virus to risk mitigation," Dirk Pfeiffer who studies emerging infectious diseases at the City University of Hong Kong, told NPR's Jason Beaubien. The new goal, Pfeiffer said, should be to minimize the coronavirus's risk to the people who are most vulnerable to severe cases, similar to how influenza is treated.
But in his update on the current status of the COVID-19 outbreak, Ghebreyesus said there's still a chance to prevent a pandemic – and that for now, the outbreak doesn't fit the formal definition of a pandemic. For instance, he said,"WHO experts aren't seeing an"uncontained global spread of this virus, and we are not witnessing large-scale severe disease or death.
A more accurate way to look at COVID-19 right now, Ghebreyesus said, is to view it as causing a number of individual epidemics in several countries. Each of those epidemics are different and require their own unique responses, he said. And he reiterated his call to spread facts, not fear.Urging governments and regular citizens alike to focus on preventing further infections, Ghebreyesus added,"We must focus on containment, while doing everything we can to prepare for a potential pandemic.
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