THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION has issued a stark warning about the next six months in relation to the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr. David Nabarro said that he is "very worried about the next six months."
Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, he said the numbers of new cases in Ireland was "encouraging" but that it was important to have clarity on how well different areas are at identifying them.
"I'm pretty much in favour of what’s happening in Ireland right now on these things. And then try to be as public as possible as to what the situation is.
"There's also a necessity to know how well organised the hospitals are. Have they got good stocks, just in case there’s new outbreaks that come?
"And also are the residential homes for older people, what you call nursing homes, working properly, you need a kind of a dashboard of indicators to tell you what’s happening."
Dr Nabarro said that the situation in other parts of the world was "disturbing", particularly where leaders appeared to be downplaying the dangers of Covid-19 in a supposed dig at US President Donald Trump, among others.
"This is a very serious problem right now and it is advancing across the world extremely rapidly. I am very worried about the next six months," he said.
"What we learn from this is the absolute need for everybody in each country to do everything they can to stop outbreaks and when they do build up to suppress them really quickly.
"That doesn’t mean having giant lockdowns, it means having focused attention to where the virus is," he added.
