{"id":99826,"date":"2020-03-11T16:29:54","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T23:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=99826"},"modified":"2020-03-11T16:29:54","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T23:29:54","slug":"who-declares-coronavirus-a-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/03\/11\/who-declares-coronavirus-a-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO declares coronavirus a pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said via Twitter that COVID-19 was the first type of coronavirus to cause a pandemic. He said describing the ongoing situation as one did not change the organization\u2019s assessment of the threat, or what WHO is doing, and it doesn\u2019t change what countries should do either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u0db1\u0dc0 \u0d9a\u0ddc\u0dbb\u0ddd\u0db1\u0dcf \u0dc0\u0ddb\u0dbb\u0dba \u0dc0\u0dc3\u0d82\u0d9c\u0dad \u0dad\u0dad\u0dca\u0dad\u0dca\u0dc0\u0dba\u0d9a\u0dca \u0db6\u0dc0 \u0dbd\u0ddd\u0d9a \u0dc3\u0dde\u0d9b\u0dca\u200d\u0dba \u0dc3\u0d82\u0dc0\u0dd2\u0db0\u0dcf\u0db1\u0dba \u0db4\u0dca\u200d\u0dbb\u0d9a\u0dcf\u0dc1 \u0d9a\u0dbb\u0dba\u0dd2...\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5Hzu_vQCuH8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly,\u201d Tedros said. It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the term has already been employed by many medical professionals, the WHO has avoided an official declaration before now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The organization officially defines pandemic as the worldwide spread of a new disease,\u201d noting that viruses that have caused past pandemics typically originated from animal influenza viruses,\u201d which appears to the be the case with this novel coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The assessment comes as Italy is weighing even tighter restrictions on daily life and has announced billions in financial relief to cushion economic shocks from the coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Premier Giuseppe Conte says he will consider requests to toughen an already extraordinary lockdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The hardest-hit region of Lombardy is pushing for a shutdown of nonessential businesses and public transportation on top of travel and social restrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The death toll in Italy has risen to 631. In the U.S., more than 1,000 people have been infected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>-Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said via Twitter that COVID-19 was the first type of coronavirus to cause a pandemic. He said describing the ongoing situation as one did not change the organization\u2019s assessment of the threat, or what WHO is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}