Watch the latest updates and WHO statements on coronavirus
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The World Health Organization officials have said that the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is not a pandemic.
The officials also have said that the transmission of the deadly virus can be controlled.
Dr. Sylvie Briand, director of the World Health Organization’s Infectious Hazards Management Department, said in a press conference: “We are not in a pandemic.”
“We will try to extinguish the transmission in each of these.” She added that it “can be done with containment measures currently in place.”
The control measures include early detection, isolation, and treatment of the cases.
These measures can control the virus from spreading, Briand said.
However, they admitted that it is challenging to control the virus because of the global mass movement.
The deadly coronavirus, which is believed to have originated in the central city of Wuhan, has killed more than 425 people and infected more than 20,000 people across the world.
Still, Briand said that the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is not a pandemic as it has not yet reached pandemic levels.
Paul Digard, chair of virology of The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh, said in an email: “The virus has traveled across multiple continents, but these instances of long-range travel seem to have only resulted in very focal outbreaks.”
“Unless/until it has been shown to have set up widespread onward transmission chains in other countries, I think it’s reasonable to remain calling it an outbreak”, he added.
However, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in the United States, believes we are heading towards a pandemic.
As the deadly virus continues to spread, Fauci said ‘it looks like it’s heading towards what we would call a pandemic.’
Meanwhile, Trump administration has banned foreign nationals, except the immediate family of US citizens, who have traveled in China in the last two weeks, from entering the US.
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