WHO chief on 'first pandemic of the digital age'

The Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday promoted the benefits of digital transformation in health care, while also cautioning that digital technologies needed to be "used wisely".

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the remarks on the second day of the World Health Summit, which had been due to take place in Berlin but was switched to an online event because of the pandemic.

Ghebreyesus said that "we are seeing first hand how these new tools can support our efforts" as the world experienced "the first pandemic of the digital age".

He added that digital technologies could bring the world "further down the road to universal health coverage", but needed to comply with "ethical standards" and "protect privacy and confidentiality."

At the digital summit, about 300 experts focus on global health for three days, with the corona pandemic as the overarching theme.

Several of the leaders and health experts who spoke at the opening stressed the need to cooperate across borders and with the support of politics, science, business and civil society to get the pandemic under control.

More than 42 million have been confirmed to have been infected with the coronavirus and over 1.1 million people have died of COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

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