Corona confrontation: WHO warns against easing measures, Europeans fail to formulate financial plan

The World Health Organization warned against easing the procedures to contain the Corona virus, considering that its containment in Europe is still far away, and denied the accusations against it from the White House, at a time when Europeans failed to agree on a financial plan to address the consequences of the epidemic.

The European Office of the organization announced today, Wednesday, that despite the "positive indications" received from some countries, the situation in Europe is still "very worrying" and it is too early to ease measures aimed at containing the emerging corona virus.

Office Director Hans Klug called in a press conference for all countries to intensify their efforts in three areas: protecting health workers, separating those recovering from suspicious cases, and communicating with people.

Klug added that some countries, such as Italy and Spain, are beginning to show signs of a decrease in the increase in new cases, and "some good progress" is being made in Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland. But he expressed concern about the escalating cases in Turkey, Israel, Sweden, Finland, Ukraine and other countries.

He explained that seven of the ten countries most affected globally are in the (old) European continent, considering that it is "dangerous to think that we are nearing the end."

A few days ago, Austria, Norway and Denmark announced plans to gradually lift the restrictions in effect from the middle of this month.

A meeting of European Union finance ministers failed to reach an agreement on a recovery plan that would address the aftermath of the Coronavirus outbreak after a long night of talks, but Euro Group President Mario Centeno confirmed that the meeting would resume tomorrow.

The most affected countries, such as Italy, France and Spain, adhere to the need to make an unprecedented financial effort in the form of joint debt, which is the establishment of a mechanism that allows resorting to joint borrowing, which is opposed by other countries, particularly Germany and the Netherlands.

Charges
On the other hand, Klug was asked about statements by US President Donald Trump that he would suspend his country's contribution to the organization. He said, "We are still at the critical stage of the epidemic, so now is not the time to stop funding."

The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Muhammad also defended the health organization, and said in a tweet on Twitter, "I was surprised that the US government is cracking down on the world leaders of the World Health Organization," stressing that the Union supports "in full" the Director-General of the Ethiopian Tidros Adhanum Gebresuez.

Global health officials have denied that they are focusing on China, after Trump said at a White House press conference that the organization is biased to China, but he withdrew minutes later and said that he did not decide to suspend the payment but rather intends to study this possibility only, and that "the time for settling accounts" will come later. .