World Health Organization highlights increase in cases, but lower mortality

Hans Kluge, WHO regional director, says that the number of new daily cases today is “two to three times” higher than what happened in the first months of the pandemic, but the number of deaths is “five times lower.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) said today that the number of new daily cases of infection with the new coronavirus in Europe is higher than the first months of the pandemic, but the number of deaths from Covid-19 is lower.

In a press conference from the WHO Europe regional headquarters, the regional director, Hans Kluge, pointed out that the number of new daily cases is currently “two to three times” higher than what happened in the first months of the pandemic, but the number of deaths is “five times lower”.

The explanation, he said, will be the fact that “the transmission is taking place in younger and less vulnerable people”, but he warned that the situation “has the potential to drastically worsen with social contact between generations indoors”.

In ten days, the number of confirmed cases of infection in the region “went from six million to seven million” and that covid-19 is currently the “fifth leading cause of death”.

Hans Kluge defended that “it is time to increase restrictive measures” in the contact between lighter people, stressing that “the pandemic will not reverse the course by itself”.

Original article available in Portuguese at http://postal.pt/