Lebanese Ministry of Information
COVID-19 cases surpassed 100,000 worldwide on Friday as the new flu-like coronavirus continues to spread outside of China, the epicenter of the outbreak.
The total number of cases now stands at 100,055 as of 8 a.m. ET on Friday, according to data compiled by John Hopkins. The majority of the cases are in mainland China, followed by South Korea, Iran and Italy. In the United States, there are at least 233 cases and 14 deaths, according to John Hopkins.
On Thursday, the World Health Organization called on all nations to “pull out all the stops” to fight the COVID-19 outbreak as it continues to spread across dozens of countries.
“This epidemic can be pushed back but only with a coordinated and comprehensive approach that engages the entire machinery of government,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. “We’re calling on every country to act with speed, scale and clear-minded determination.”
Tedros said world health officials are “deeply concerned” about the increasing number of countries reporting cases, especially those with weaker health-care systems. He’s also worried that some countries aren’t taking this seriously enough or have decided that there’s nothing they can do to curb local outbreaks.
World health officials said Tuesday the mortality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%.
The COVID-19 epidemic has not yet met world health officials’ designation of a global pandemic that spreads far and wide throughout the world.
Tedros has said WHO hasn’t declared a pandemic in part because most cases of COVID-19 were still traced to known contacts or clusters of cases, and there wasn’t any “evidence as yet that the virus is spreading freely in communities.”
CNBC
