Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

WHO Director-General

We don't have any power or force to enforce our advice except the willingness of the countries to accept or reject. As you remember, on January 30, we declared the highest level of emergency, global emergency on COVID. During that time as you may remember, there were only 82 cases outside China. No cases in Latin America, actually. No cases in Africa. Only 10 cases in Europe. No deaths in the rest of the world, Nothing. And every country could have triggered all its public health measures possible. And then, we advised the whole world to implement a comprehensive public health approach. And we said: Find, test, isolate and do contact tracing and so on. One thing I would like to assure you is: we will continue to give advice based on science and evidence, and then it will be up to countries whether to take it or not.