Dr. David Nabarro, the World Health Organization’s special envoy on Covid-19, warned that the virus will not necessarily come in waves like influenza.
In an interview on NBC, Nabarro said the WHO thinks “it is going to be a virus that stalks the human race for quite a long time to come,” until a vaccine is developed.
Moving forward, he said there will be small outbreaks “sporadically,” and it is crucial that every community has a “defense shield” to isolate cases and prevent a large outbreak.
When asked if the world’s curve of coronavirus cases is flattening, Nabarro said that although there are signs of the flattening the curve in Europe and the US, the WHO is “still very worried and still very much on high alert,” particularly for countries with weaker health systems.
Nabarro emphasized the global nature of the coronavirus problem, and called for greater cooperation between world leaders, saying, “I would like leaders to be a little more cooperative, yes please.”
Some context: President Trump last week accused the WHO of not confronting the virus aggressively enough in its early stages, being too friendly towards China in its work and said there would have been fewer deaths if the organization had given “correct analysis.”
Nabarro defended the WHO saying it must work with the information it is given by governments, and that “we believe what we’ve got, we work with what we’ve got.”
He also mentioned how China allowed the WHO to investigate inside the country in February, and there were no restrictions placed on the team there, which included some American doctors, he noted.
Nabarro further said that he “loves” the WHO’s partnership with the United States, and that the director of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has spoken directly with Trump.