02/04/2020 - 10:11
- Clarín.com
- World
The coronavirus already killed 425 people in China and on Tuesday the second fatality was known outside the territory, now in Hong Kong. But although the virus reached about 20 countries, the World Health Organization said this morning that the viral pneumonia epidemic that broke out in the Asian giant in December is not, today, a pandemic .
"Currently, we are not in a pandemic situation," a term that applies to a worldwide spread of a disease, Sylvie Briand, director of the WHO Global Preparation for Infection Risks Department, told reporters. "We are in an epidemic phase with multiple focuses, " he added.
Briand gave a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, and said that from the agency they try to "extinguish those foci."
Sylvie Briand, director of the WHO Global Preparation for Risk of Infection Department. (REUTERS)
The World Health Organization makes the designation of a pandemic when there are outbreaks on at least two continents and that has not yet happened. So far, the agency says it is a "public health emergency of international concern." The last virus that reached the pandemic level was that of the 2009 H1N1 influenza that today circulates seasonally throughout the world at the level of a common flu.
In turn, Briand acknowledged that to stop the spread of the coronavirus it is very important that infected people wear chinstraps and revealed that China, so far, has not requested provisions from WHO, but uses its own.
Finally, the director of that WHO office said that, for the moment, there is no evidence of a mutation of the coronavirus, since it is "a stable virus" .
Since it appeared in December in the city of Wuhan, in central China, the new coronavirus contaminated more than 20,000 people and spread to several countries. This Tuesday the first death from the virus was known in Hong Kong, adding to one in the Philippines last week.
With agency information.
JPE