WHO praises Spain's 'heroic response' to Coronavirus outbreak
Thursday, April 9, 2020 @ 5:46 PM
A WORLD Health Organisation inspection in Spain has concluded that it has acted 'heroically' and that it did, in fact, move humanly quickly after the Coronavirus spread like wildfire within days.
Head of epidemiology and health emergency at the WHO, Canada's Dr Bruce Aylward, headed up the mission to check on Spain's response to the spread of Covid-19 and has assured that measures taken have led to the trend 'moving towards hope'.
“Spain's response has been truly heroic, and the efforts of those on the front line extraordinarily innovative,” Dr Aylward said in a press conference, having spent eight days in the country.
His visit included inspections in medical centres in Madrid and the province of Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha – the first being the worst-hit area in the country, and the second also having some of the highest numbers of cases.
Multiplications of contagions have reduced from two days at the beginning of March to eight days by a week into April, says Dr Aylward.
This means that the time it takes for a person infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus to pass it on to multiple other people now averages eight days, whereas, just three weeks ago, this would have happened in a quarter of the time.
Imposing the national lockdown meant the average transmission time went almost immediately from two days to five.
These data 'offer hope' and are 'proof that the epidemic has been halted effectively', confirms the WHO specialist.
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