China has bigger role to play in global fight against coronavirus, says country’s top expert
- Zhong Nanshan, a leading respiratory disease specialist, says the country can start to help others after entering new stage in its fight against Covid-19
- WHO has declared the disease a pandemic but Zhong said that if the rest of the world takes the fight seriously, the tide could start to turn in June
China can play a bigger role in the global fight against the Covid-19 outbreak after the disease spread to more than 110 countries, according to one of the country’s leading respiratory disease experts.
Zhong Nanshan made the comments as the World Health Organisation officially declared the outbreak, which started in Wuhan last December, a pandemic and warned that more people around the world would be infected.
So far it has infected more than 120,000 people, killing around 4,700.
“This is the first pandemic caused by coronavirus,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing in Geneva on Wednesday. It was the first time the WHO has called an outbreak a pandemic since the H1N1 “swine flu” in 2009.
“WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” Ghebreyesus said.