WHO Head on COVID-19: Pandemic Is Accelerating

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says world leaders and health officials won't be able to defeat COVID-19 if they rely only on defensive measures such as social distancing and requiring people to stay at home.

"The pandemic is accelerating," he said.

"It took 67 days from the first reported case to reach the first 100,000 cases, 11 days for the second 100,000 cases and just four days for the third 100,000 cases."

However, he added: "But we're not prisoners to statistics. We're not helpless bystanders. We can change the trajectory of this pandemic."

"You can't win a football game only by defending. You have to attack as well," Tedros said at a briefing in Geneva.

He emphasized: "Asking people to stay at home and other physical-distancing measures are an important way of slowing down the spread of the virus and buying time — but they are defensive measures.

"To win, we need to attack the virus with aggressive and targeted tactics — testing every suspected case, isolating and caring for every confirmed case and tracing and quarantining every close contact."

There are more than 370,000 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide, with more than 100,000 people who recovered from the illness, along with more than 16,000 who have died.

By Ana Dumbadze 

Photo source: AFP via Getty Images