World Health Organization announces coronavirus pandemic

The World Health Organization has announced a coronavirus pandemic. The corresponding statement was made on March 11 by WHO Director-General Tedros Adan Gebreisus, Kommersant reports.

Earlier, the WHO Director-General said that it was too early to announce a coronavirus pandemic since the entire resource of aggressive struggle to contain the virus had not been exhausted.

The WHO clarified that the description of the situation as a pandemic did not change both the assessment of the virus threat and the methods of combating the disease. In the near future, it is expected that the number of cases of infection and the number of affected countries will increase.

Currently, cases have been reported in 109 countries. According to recent data, all over the world, a new type of virus was detected in more than 121 thousand people, more than 4 thousand infected died. In Russia, 31 cases of COVID-19 infection have been confirmed. Due to the fact that the majority of infected had previously arrived from Italy, Russia introduced temporary restrictions on issuing visas to citizens of this country.

Pandemic is an epidemic characterized by the spread of an infectious disease in the country to the territory of neighboring states or many countries of the world (for example, flu, cholera).