Daily Times

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has expressed concerns that COVID-19 is 10 times more deadly than swine flu.

While urging the world leaders to slowly lift the lockdown as part of tightening measures to curb the virus from spreading, WHO chief said, “We know that COVID-19 spreads fast, and we know that it is deadly, 10 times more deadly than the swine flu, which caused a global pandemic in 2009.”

“We’re all learning all the time and adjusting our strategy, based on the latest available evidence. We know that Covid-19 spreads fast, and we know that it is deadly – 10 times deadlier than the 2009 flu pandemic,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press briefing on Monday.

According to statistics provided by the WHO the death toll from the 2009 “swine flu”, or H1N1 pandemic stood at 18,500. The swine flu was first uncovered in Mexico and the United States in March 2009, However, statistics by the Lancet estimated the death toll to be somewhere between 151,700 and 575,400.

The swine flu outbreak had begun in Mexico and was declared a pandemic in June 2009. It was considered to be over by August 2010.

The coronavirus outbreak is traced back to Wuhan in China which is believed to be the ground zero for the novel coronavirus pandemic. The first case of the new virus was reported back in December 2019. As of Tuesday morning, countries across the globe have reported over 1.8 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 with the death toll surpassing 1.1 lakh as per reports.

Tedros lamented Monday that some countries are seeing a doubling of cases every three to four days, but stressed that if countries were committed to “early case-finding, testing, isolating (and) caring for every case and tracing every contact” they could rein in the virus.