About one person out of every 10 on the planet has been infected with the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, according to the World Health Organization’s “best estimates.”
The executive director of WHO’s emergencies programs, Dr. Michael Ryan, 55, or Ireland made the declaration Monday to a special session of the organization’s 34-member executive board focusing on COVID-19, several outlets reported. His approximation is more than 20 times the number of known confirmed cases, which would amount to 760 million out of the world’s population of 7.6 billion.
According to Worldometers.info, more than 1 million deaths have been associated with the respiratory, flu-like COVID-19, out of the more than 35.6 million known infections.
“Our current best estimates tell us that about 10% of the global population may have been infected by this virus,” Ryan said.
WHO spokeswoman Dr. Margaret Harris said the number was determined on an average of antibody studies, published around the world.
The United States has more than 7.6 million confirmed cases, resulting in 214,889 COVID-19 related deaths.
Ryan added southeast Asia was experiencing significant increases in confirmed infections, Europe and the eastern Mediterranean were seeing an increase in deaths, while Africa and the Western Pacific were “rather more positive.”
He proclaimed the world was “now heading into a difficult period. The disease continues to spread. It is on the rise in many parts of the world.”
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