Good afternoon everyone.
Let me start as I always do with the latest data.
As of 6 am Geneva time today, China has reported 70,635 cases of COVID-19 to WHO, including 1772 deaths.
In the past 24 hours China has reported 2051 new cases, which includes both clinically-confirmed and lab-confirmed cases.
94% of new cases continue to come from Hubei province.
Outside China, WHO has received reports of 694 cases from 25 countries, and three deaths.
As more data comes in from China, we’re starting to get a clearer picture of the outbreak, how it’s developing and where it could be headed.
Today China has published a paper with detailed data on more than 44,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
These data give us a better understanding about the age range of people affected, the severity of the disease and the mortality rate. As such, they are very important in enabling WHO to provide good evidence-based advice to countries. We encourage all countries to share their data publicly.
The data also appear to show a decline in new cases. This trend must be interpreted very cautiously. Trends can change as new populations are affected.
It’s too early to tell if this reported decline will continue. Every scenario is still on the table.
It also appears that COVID-19 is not as deadly as other coronaviruses including SARS and MERS.
More than 80% of patients have mild disease and will recover.
In about 14% of cases, the virus causes severe disease, including pneumonia and shortness of breath.
And about 5% of patients have critical disease including respiratory failure, septic shock and multi-organ failure.
In 2% of reported cases, the virus is fatal, and the risk of death increases the older you are.
We see relatively few cases among children. More research is needed to understand why.
These new data address some of the gaps in our understanding, but others remain.
The international team of experts now on the ground in China is working with Chinese counterparts to better understand those gaps and improve our understanding of the outbreak.
We thank all partners who have made their experts available through the GOARN framework.
WHO is continuing to work night and day on several fronts to prepare countries.
We’re sending testing kits to laboratories around the world.
We’re protecting health workers by sending personal protective equipment to many countries, and we’re working with manufacturers to ensure supply.
We’re training health workers.
We’re providing advice to countries on how to do screening, testing, contact tracing and treatment.
And we’ve put out a call for US$675 million to support countries to prepare. I thank those donors who have contributed.
But we have not seen the urgency in funding that we need.
As I keep saying, we have a window of opportunity now. We need resources now to ensure countries are prepared now.
We don’t know how long this window of opportunity will remain open. Let’s not squander it.
I thank you.