The German government confirms: “The coronavirus has become a world pandemic”

For some time, epidemiologists and public health experts have known and declared this reality, while the WHO continues to say yes, to prepare for a possible pandemic, without ever calling it by its name.

Among Italians also Prof. Carlo Signorelli – of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, had already said that “even if the WHO still hesitates to admit it, we have gone from epidemic outbreaks to a pandemic”.

When a week ago the Director General of WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was asked directly, the reason why he was not declaring the state of pandemic, he replied that using that word would only generate more fear: “this is not the time to focus which word to use. This will not prevent a single infection or save a single life today. Communication certainly plays a crucial role in this choice, and Jennifer Nuzzo of J. Hopkins University explains: “The word pandemic is scary and is used in films, but it is not synonymous with a deadly and apocalyptic virus”.

Name aside, what still drives the World Health Organization not to declare the pandemic? The technical answer for which the WHO does not declare pandemic COVID-19 is because the virus would not yet have all the characteristics or “markers” to define itself as such. According to several global health experts, the reason for the ineffectiveness of the WHO response to this crisis is to be found in the many and often conflicting roles and interests that WHO has in the states in which it operates. This, however, risks diminishing its credibility. The WHO, which had already failed with a highly criticized response to the Ebola crisis (2014-2016), demonstrates again – with its ineffective response to the Coronavirus – its weakness due to cumbersome bureaucracies and hypersensitivity to the political needs of the Member states.

WHO, which had already been undeniably late in declaring a health emergency by classifying the risk of the corona virus as moderate, proved too accommodating towards the Chinese desire to avoid the negative and inevitable economic consequences for the Asian country. When the virus had already proven its potential in China, and many in its organization were already operating to stem the virus, the Director General said that WHO did not recommend and oppose any restrictions regarding travel, trade. or other measures against China and that “If anyone ever thought of taking countermeasures, he would inevitably have fallen into error.” Putting more emphasis on the narrative of the epidemic than on its containment, he called the moment “infodemic” by playing with the words epidemic and information. According to Tedros, the coronavirus epidemic and the fakenews were, in his opinion, equally dangerous.

In fact, however, there is a fundamental difference in the strategies taken to stem outbreaks or to manage a pandemic. The measures put in place during the outbreak phase were aimed at containing the epidemic. Now, in fact, Italy is also moving from the containment phase to that of mitigation. The containment of outbreaks has become impossible in his trials, as Mario Raviolo, director of the Maxi-emergency for Piedmont declares.

Raviolo follows the mitigation strategy and invites to stay at home. “People have to understand that they have to stay home, otherwise we can’t do it, and we have to protect major hospitals from the virus.” He cites the Molinette hospital in Turin as an example, where only 10 transplant operations were performed yesterday, and other very delicate surgical procedures, on patients who need the highest level of protection that the community can offer.

Also according to Signorelli, “it is important to reconcile at this stage the primary needs of public health and health protection with their impact on the economic and social system and on the functioning of the health system for other diseases.”