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STORY: WHO / COVID-19 UPDATE
TRT: 3:39
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 13 MARCH 2020, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
12 MARCH 2020, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, WHO building exterior
13 MARCH 2020, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
2. Pan left, WHO officials walking into briefing room
3. Med shot, WHO officials
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO):
“Europe has now become the epicentre of the pandemic with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined apart from China. Our message to countries continues to be, you must take a comprehensive approach. Not testing alone, not contact tracing alone, not quarantine alone, not social distancing alone. Do it all.”
5. Med shot, Van Kerkhove at briefing
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO):
“Every person must know the signs and symptoms and how to protect themselves and others. Every health worker should be able to recognize this disease, provide care, and know what to do with their patients.”
7. Wide shot, WHO officials
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO):
“Babies are still being born, essential surgery is continuing, people still need emergency care after road traffic crashes, people still need treatment for cancer, diabetes, HIV, malaria, and many other diseases. And for all of this, we need health workers. Today. I want to send a personal and sincere thank you to every health worker around the world.”
9. Close up, Van Kerkhove at briefing
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Micheal Ryan, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“The purpose of social distancing is only to slightly slow down the virus, so your health system can cope. The objectives are different. And I think we have to be clear that social distancing measures are not a panacea. Social distancing measures are not going to stop this epidemic. They're not going to stop this pandemic purely in their own right.”
11. Wide shot, WHO officials
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical lead, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“So social distancing is one aspect that we have been promoting here. This is an addition to a lot of other measures that we have also been promoting, which include case and contact finding, aggressive case and contact finding, and testing, testing needs to be appropriate in each country to ensure that we know who are cases and who are not cases.”
13. Close up, Ryan at briefing
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical lead, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“If you haven't been contacted as a known contact of a confirmed case, contact your local department of health, contact your local ministry or your GP and say, ‘I believe I'm a contact, what should I do?’”
15. Close up, Dr. Tedros at briefing
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Micheal Ryan, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“Blanket travel measures in their own right will do nothing to protect an individual state. In fact, many countries who had outright travel bans early in the response, ended up importing cases anyway, and may have reacted later than they should have because they assume travel restrictions would protect them.”
17. Med shot, Dr. Tedros at briefing
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Micheal Ryan, Executive Director, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“Perfection is the enemy of the good, when it comes to emergency management, speed trumps perfection. And the problem in society we have at the moment is everyone is afraid of making a mistake. Everyone is afraid of the consequence of error, but the greatest error is not to move.”
19. Wide shot, press briefing room
The head of the World Health Organization Tedros Ghebreyesus said, “Europe has now become the epicentre of the pandemic with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined apart from China.”
Speaking to reporters in Geneva today (13 Mar), Dr. Tedros said WHO’s message to countries “continues to be, you must take a comprehensive approach. Not testing alone, not contact tracing alone, not quarantine alone, not social distancing alone. Do it all.”
He stressed that every person must know the signs and symptoms and how to protect themselves and others, adding that every “health worker should be able to recognize this disease, provide care, and know what to do with their patients.”
Dr. Tedros sent a “personal and sincere thank you to every health worker around the world.” He said, “Babies are still being born, essential surgery is continuing, people still need emergency care after road traffic crashes, people still need treatment for cancer, diabetes, HIV, malaria, and many other diseases. And for all of this, we need health workers.”
WHO’s Executive Director of the Health Emergencies Programme, Micheal Ryan, noted that the purpose of social distancing “is only to slightly slow down the virus, so your health system can cope.” He added, “I think we have to be clear that social distancing measures are not a panacea. Social distancing measures are not going to stop this epidemic. They're not going to stop this pandemic purely in their own right.”
On that point, Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical lead at the Health Emergencies Programme said social distancing is one aspect that WHO has been promoting. She said, “This is an addition to a lot of other measures that we have also been promoting, which include case and contact finding, aggressive case and contact finding, and testing, testing needs to be appropriate in each country to ensure that we know who are cases and who are not cases.”
SOUNDBITE (English) Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical lead, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO):
“If you haven't been contacted as a known contact of a confirmed case, contact your local department of health, contact your local ministry or your GP and say, ‘I believe I'm a contact, what should I do?’”
Dr. Micheal Ryan said blanket travel measures in their own right would “do nothing to protect an individual state. In fact, many countries who had outright travel bans early in the response, ended up importing cases anyway, and may have reacted later than they should have because they assume travel restrictions would protect them.”
Ryan stressed that perfection “is the enemy of the good, when it comes to emergency management, speed trumps perfection.” He said the problem today was that “everyone is afraid of making a mistake,” but underscored that the “greatest error is not to move.”
