WHO: ‘Very serious situation’ unfolding in Europe

A dramatic rise in new coronavirus cases in Europe has been characterized as a "wake up call" by the World Health Organisation's top official in Europe, Report says, citing TASS.

"We have a dire situation unfolding before us," WHO's regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said Thursday in a press briefing on its epidemiological situation. "Weekly cases had now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March."

He said that last week, the region's weekly tally exceeded 300,000 patients.

"More than half of European countries have reported a greater-than-10% increase in cases in the past two weeks. Of those, seven countries have seen newly reported cases increase more than two-fold in the same period."

While lockdown measures imposed in the spring and early summer pushed the number of new cases in June to an all-time low, the number of cases in September "should serve as a wake-up call for all of us," he warned.

He also called on countries in the region to follow the standard scientific procedure in collaboration with experts and look for ways to reduce quarantines safely.

On December 31, 2019, Chinese authorities announced an outbreak of pneumonia in China's Wuhan, and the causative agent is a new type of coronavirus officially named COVID-19.

On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a new coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.