Worldwide Coronavirus Cases Have Surpassed 500,000 – WHO

Over half a million people around the world have been infected with the coronavirus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced.

More than 20,000 patients have died since the coronavirus disease started spreading from China in late 2019.

WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had this to say, “These are tragic numbers, but let’s also remember that around the world, there are hundreds of thousands of survivors.”

The total number of global cases now stands at 510,108 as of 1:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The virus emerged in Wuhan, China, in December.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health. It was established on 7 April 1948, and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The WHO is a member of the United Nations Development Group. Its predecessor, the Health Organization, was an agency of the League of Nations.

The WHO constitution has been signed by 61 countries (all 51 member countries and 10 others) on 22 July 1946, with the first meeting of the World Health Assembly finishing on 24 July 1948. It incorporated the Office International d’Hygiène Publique and the League of Nations Health Organization. Since its establishment, it has played a leading role in the eradication of smallpox. Its current priorities include communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis; the mitigation of the effects of non-communicable diseases such as sexual and reproductive health, development, and aging; nutrition, food security and healthy eating; occupational health; substance abuse; and driving the development of reporting, publications, and networking.

The WHO is responsible for the World Health Report, the worldwide World Health Survey, and World Health Day. The current Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom, also served as Ethiopian Health Minister from 2005 to 2012 and as Ethiopian Foreign Minister from 2012 to 2016. Adhanom started his five-year term on 1 July 2017.