The Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has confirmed that all preparations have been finalised and the organization’s experts will be traveling to China this weekend to prepare scientific plans for identifying the zoonotic source of Covid-19.
Over the past few months, there has been a lot of discussion about the origins of COVID-19. The outbreak is accelerating. Currently, there are 11.4 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 535,000 lives lost.
“The experts will develop the scope and terms of reference for a WHO-led international mission. The objective is to advance the understanding of animal hosts for COVID-19 and ascertain how the disease jumped between animals and humans.” He said
He noted that WHO has partnered with Facebook and Praekelt.org to provide the organization’s COVID-19 information in Free Basics and Discover, in a mobile friendly format.
Through this collaboration, WHO will reach some of the most vulnerable people who will be able to access lifesaving health information without any data charges in more than 50 countries.
“We have launched this product in English, French, Spanish and Arabic and other languages will follow in the coming weeks. I want to thank Google for its continued support and dedication to keep the global community safe and informed and for its recently increased ad grant to WHO.” He said
He said the support will enable WHO to catch trending falsehoods early, respond to them quickly, and give people better access to lifesaving information when they need it most; wherever they are in they are in the world.
“This pandemic has shown the importance of being able to see each other online while being physically apart.”
