The World Health Organization issued a dire warning on Friday that the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, and noted that Thursday was a record for new daily cases — more than 150,000 globally.
“The world is in a new and dangerous phase,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O. “Many people are understandably fed up with being at home. Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and their economies. But the virus is still spreading fast. It is still deadly and most people are still susceptible.”
If the outbreak was defined early on by a series of shifting epicenters — including Wuhan, China; Iran; northern Italy; Spain; and New York — it is now defined by its wide and expanding scope. According to a New York Times database, 81 nations have seen a growth in new cases over the past two weeks, while only 36 have seen declines.
Dr. Tedros said that almost half of the new cases that were reported on Thursday came from the Americas. Large numbers of cases are also being reported from Africa, South Asia and the Middle East.
Dr. Tedros urged individuals to continue to maintain distance from others, to cover their noses and mouths with masks when appropriate and wash their hands. He said nations must to continue to find, isolate, test and care for every person infected with the virus, and to test and quarantine every contact. “We call on all countries to exercise extreme vigilance,” he said.
But risks are multiplying as nations begin to reopen their economies.
In India, which initially placed all 1.3 billion of its citizens under a lockdown — then moved to reopen even with its strained public health system near the breaking point — officials reported a record number of new cases Wednesday. And the virus is now spreading rapidly in nearby Pakistan and Bangladesh as well.
It took Africa nearly 100 days to reach 100,000 cases, the W.H.O. has noted, but only 19 days to double that tally. South Africa now averages a thousand more new cases each day than it did two weeks ago.
And some countries where caseloads had appeared to taper — including Israel, Sweden and Costa Rica — are now watching them rise again.
