COVID-19: WHO warns of a ‘new and dangerous phase’ after 150,000 new recorded cases

The World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned of a “new and dangerous phase” in the accelerating COVID-19 pandemic after 150,000 new cases were reported worldwide on Friday – the highest in a single day.

This came as the United Nations Special Representative for Haiti; Helen La Lime warned that the COVID-19 pandemic is worsening the country’s “already alarming humanitarian situation”, something that could see an increasing number of citizens flee the island to seek a better life abroad.

Lime added that unless more help was offered to tackle Haiti’s economic recession, ”a primarily domestic problem could transform into a regional issue,” she warned during a virtual meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday.

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She added: “A vicious circle of mistrust, recrimination and ultimately violence, is once again starting to define the dynamics of Haitian politics at a time when the entire society should be unified in its response to the pandemic”.

In a related development, the death toll arising from COVID-19 disease in Brazil has reached 50,000 even as the number of infections thus far recorded in the South American country has stretched to one million.

With the world’s worst outbreak outside of the United States, Brazil now has 978,142 confirmed cases and 47,748 deaths.

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, at least 8.4 million people have been confirmed to have COVID-19 around the world and more than four million have recovered from the virus.

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