“The lockdown of 11 million people is unprecedented in public health history,” said Gauden Galea, the WHO’s representative in Beijing. Meanwhile, the WHO has said it considers it is still too early to declare coronavirus as a public health emergency of international concern given its restrictive and binary nature. It was a “bit too early” to consider the outbreak a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” WHO Emergency Committee panel chair Didier Houssin said after the body met in Geneva. “It has not yet become a global health emergency. Declarations of a public health emergency of international concern are relatively rare.

Source: Hindustan Times January 24, 2020 03:02 UTC