WHO tackles new coronavirus strains as worldwide death toll nears 2 million
- UN health body gathers global experts for emergency meeting on mutated variants blamed for fresh surge in infections
- Britain bans more international travellers to prevent spread of strain from Brazil; France imposes nationwide 6pm curfew
Global health experts gathered on Thursday to tackle new coronavirus strains blamed for a fresh surge in infections as countries including Britain and France tightened restrictions to head off a further worsening of the pandemic that has claimed nearly 2 million lives worldwide.
The World Health Organization (WHO) emergency committee session came as their colleagues were seeking the origins of the virus on a long-delayed mission to the pandemic ground zero in Wuhan.
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Worldwide coronavirus death toll nears 2 million
Almost 2 million of the more than 92 million people who have caught the disease have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, but the figures are widely believed to be an underestimate.
“When you first met almost a year ago, just 557 cases of the disease we now call Covid-19 had been reported to WHO,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his opening remarks to the emergency meeting.
Much of the planet is facing a second or third wave of infections, with populations chafing under painful and economically damaging restrictions.
Already hard-hit by a new variant at home, Britain announced Thursday it was banning all arrivals from South America, Panama, Cape Verde and Portugal.