The United Nations, UN has said that the Coronavirus is the worst crisis to hit the world since World War II.
The warning comes as US fatalities have now exceeded China’s with nearly 860,000 people globally confirmed with the fatal disease.
The US announced almost 800 deaths on Tuesday – bringing the total to more than 3,700 while Spain, the United Kingdom, France and Italy each reported their largest single-day increase in deaths since the start of the pandemic. Other continents like Africa, South America, Australia have also been affected by the disease with Oil prices slumping and world economies crashing.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed concern that Coronavirus could trigger conflicts around the world.
Guterres said that the scale of the crisis was due to “a disease that represents a threat to everybody in the world and… an economic impact that will bring a recession that probably has no parallel in the recent past.”
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“The combination of the two facts and the risk that it contributes to enhanced instability, enhanced unrest, and enhanced conflict are things that make us believe that this is the most challenging crisis we have faced since the Second World War,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
“A stronger and more effective response… is only possible in solidarity if everybody comes together and if we forget political games and understand that it is humankind that is at stake,” Guterres added.
“We are far from having a global package to help the developing world to create the conditions both to suppress the disease and to address the dramatic consequences,” Guterres warned, pointing to unemployment and the the collapse of small firms.
“We are slowly moving in the right direction, but we need to speed up, and we need to do much more if we want to defeat the virus.”
Juliet Ekwebelam
