Following the formal declaration of Covid-19 as a pandemic, governments, agencies and aid organisations worldwide will now shift efforts from containment to mitigation. By ELIZABETH MERABMore by this AuthorThe World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday declared coronavirus a global pandemic. “Describing the situation as a pandemic does not change WHO’s assessment of the threat posed by this coronavirus. The last global pandemic was the swine flu in 2009, for which WHO received backlash over whether the outbreak should have been labelled a pandemic — the agency had lowered the threshold for what defines a pandemic shortly before the declaration. The risk of global Covid-19 spread was classified as “very high,” the highest level in their risk classification scheme.

Source: Daily Nation March 11, 2020 17:08 UTC