COVID-19 a ‘defining global health crisis of our time’, WHO says as vaccine tests open in US

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus also known as COVID-19 is a “defining global health crisis of our time”, and urged countries to test all suspected cases of COVID-19.

“We have a simple message to all countries – test, test, test,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva on Monday. “All countries should be able to test all suspected cases. They cannot fight this pandemic blindfolded.”

In a related development, US researchers gave the first shot to the first person in a test of an experimental coronavirus vaccine on Monday – leading off a worldwide hunt for protection against the virus.

READ ALSO: Biden, Sanders slam Trump over handling of coronavirus outbreak

“We’re team coronavirus now,” Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute, Seattle, study leader Dr Lisa Jackson said on the eve of the experiment. “Everyone wants to do what they can in this emergency.”

Meanwhile, the Sovereign Council in charge of Sudan has declared a state of emergency in a bid to stop the spread of coronavirus.

The council “decided to close all airports, land and sea border crossings, except to humanitarian aid,” spokesman Mohammad al-Fakki Suleiman told journalists on Monday.

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