World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday that global COVID-19 cases had doubled over the past six weeks.
He said he would resume the Emergency Committee on Thursday to re-evaluate the COVID-19 pandemic, reports Xinhua.
Tedros said that Thursday (July 30) will mark six months since Jan 30 when WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
He told a virtual press conference that almost 16 million cases have now been reported to WHO, with more than 640,000 deaths worldwide.
"This is the sixth time a global health emergency has been declared under the International Health Regulations, but it is easily the most severe," he said.
The WHO chief also added that the pandemic continues to accelerate.
In the past six weeks, the global total number of cases has roughly doubled, Tedros said.
He said that although the world has changed, the basic measures needed to suppress transmission and save lives have not -- find, isolate, test and care for cases, and trace and quarantine their contacts.
"Countries and communities that have followed this advice carefully and consistently have done well, either in preventing large-scale outbreaks -- like Cambodia, New Zealand, Rwanda, Thailand, Vietnam, and islands in the Pacific and Caribbean -- or in bringing large outbreaks under control, like Canada, China, Germany and the Republic of Korea," he said.