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STORY: WHO / CORONA VIRUS UPDATE
TRT: 2.23
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 05 JULY 2013, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
FILE – RECENT, WHO HEADQUARTERS, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, exterior WHO HQ
05 JULY 2013, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
2. Wide shot, podium with Dr Keiji Fukuda
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO Assistant Director-General, Health Security and Environment, WHO:
“Right now we don't know what the animal reservoir is and we don't know, again, what is the exact exposure for how people in communities are getting infected. We don't know whether exposure to some kind of animal, perhaps a contaminated environment, something like that, but this is just unclear to us right now, despite a fair amount of investigation.”
4. Cutaway, journalists
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO Assistant Director-General, Health Security and Environment, WHO:
“In terms of this person to person transmission, we are not seeing it sweep through communities and so it's important to understand this is a kind of local limited person to person transmission in certain instances but we don't see it sweeping through communities in big outbreaks.”
6. Cutaway, journalists
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO Assistant Director-General, Health Security and Environment, WHO:
“What we have decided to do at WHO is go ahead next week and to convene an International Health Regulations Emergency Committee. So, the reason why we'll do this is that, again, recognising what we see and what we don't see, we really want to be in a position to be ready for any possibility and we want countries to be in a position of being ready for any possible directions that this virus could take. And so by convening and emergency committee, an IHR Emergency Committee, what this will do is that it will allow the director general and WHO to receive input from an external group of experts and so we will get formal consultations and information coming in and what it will also do is that if in the future we do see some kind of explosion or there's some big outbreak or we think that the situation has really changed, we will already have a group of Emergency Committee experts who are really up to speed.”
8. Cutaway, journalists
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO Assistant Director-General, Health Security and Environment, WHO:
Right now we see this steady pattern of cases we are not in the midst of any acute event right now. There's no acute emergency related to the MERS situation going on but it is a good time to kind of be as you know, do whatever we can do to be as ready as possible.”
10. Med shot, journalists
The World Health Organization (WHO) today announced it’s forming an emergency committee of experts to study the situation of the Middle East Coronavirus (MERS), which has killed 40 people so far, according to the WHO.
WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment, Dr Keiji Fukuda, told a press briefing today (5 July) in Geneva that WHO did not know what the exposure was for people in communities to get infected. He said that “We don't know whether exposure to some kind of animal, perhaps a contaminated environment, something like that, but this is just unclear to us right now, despite a fair amount of investigation.”
Commenting on the person to person transmission situation, Fukuda said that WHO was not “seeing it sweep through communities” so he said that it was important to understand that the transmission of the virus was “a kind of local limited person to person transmission in certain instances,” and he stressed that “we don't see it sweeping through communities in big outbreaks.”
He said that establishing an emergency committee would allow the Director General to receive formal consultations and information regarding the virus and also to be prepared in the case of “some big outbreak”.
Fakuda said, “We think that the situation has really changed, we will already have a group of Emergency Committee experts who are really up to speed.”
He also noted that “we see this steady pattern of cases we are not in the midst of any acute event right now.”
He also said that there was no acute emergency related to the MERS situation going on but he added, “it is a good time to kind of be as you know, do whatever we can do to be as ready as possible.”
