Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) - The coronavirus pandemic is the defining crisis of our time, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Ghebreyesus stated, TASS reports.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is the defining crisis of our time. He taught the world a lot of painful lessons,” said the CEO in Berlin at the opening ceremony of the Epidemic and Pandemic Data Center.

The head of WHO considers the need for new, powerful systems and tools for the global observation, collection, analysis and dissemination of data on outbreaks of diseases that have the potential to become epidemics and pandemics as one of the clearest lessons. He recalled that urbanization, deforestation, climate change and intensive agricultural practices increase the risk of animal-to-human transmission. As Tedros Ghebreyesus emphasized, viruses are spreading rapidly, but information can spread even faster, so people can prepare.

According to the latest data from the American Johns Hopkins University, the total number of people infected with COVID-19 in the world exceeds 218 million. The number of deaths is more than 4.5 million.