“Covid was the first disease X, but it can happen again.” Thus the director general of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
‘Disease X’ “is not a new idea”, he clarified. “We used the terminology for the first time in 2018. Every year the WHO draws up a list of emerging diseases. We included Mers, Zika, Ebola. But we also said that there are things that could happen that we don’t know today,” he said. Tedros added. “We gave it the name ‘disease X’.”
Tedros also clarified that the WHO has long been repeating that the occurrence of a pandemic “is a question of when and not if”. “If we say it – he concluded – it is not to create panic but to prepare”, she added.
“The time to prepare for the new pandemic is now, not when it arrives”Tedros wanted to reiterate on X at the end of the speech.
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