WHO chief urges US to reconsider funding, says 'virus will be with us for a long time'

Reuters reports that the head of the "World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that he hoped the Trump administration would reconsider its suspension of funding, but that his main focus was on ending the pandemic and saving lives."

Key warnings from WHO

• There were “worrying upward trends” in early epidemics in parts of Africa and central and South America, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
• “Most countries are still in the early stages of their epidemics and some that were affected early in the pandemic are starting to see a resurgence in cases,” Tedros told Geneva journalists in a virtual briefing.
• “Make no mistake we have a long way to go. This virus will be with us for a long time,” he said, while noting that epidemics in Western Europe appear to be stabilising or declining.
• “I hope the freezing of the funding will be reconsidered and the U.S. will once again support WHO’s work and continue to save lives,” Tedros said. “I hope the U.S. believes that this an important investment, not just to help others but for the U.S. to stay safe also.”
•  “We are at the beginning in Africa,” Ryan said.
• “There are still many gaps in the world’s defences and no single country has everything in place,” said Tedros.

Additionally, the article went on to quote Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity who said that the world would need to learn to live with the new COVID-19 disease.

“This is not a discrete one-off episode. My belief is that this is now an endemic human infection...We’re going to have to find ways to deal with that,”

– he told an online media briefing.

Risk-off for longer

This is not good for sentiment and the canary in the coal mine has been the oil market and the US dollar rallying back to the psychological 100 mark again.

• USD/JPY holding in familiar territory, yen resilient to bid in USD