UN chief says world at ‘war’ against COVID-19

Antonio Guterres calls for countries to apply ‘wartime logic’ to fight the virus that has killed 3.4 million people.

The world is “at war” against COVID-19, the UN chief says, calling for the application of wartime logic to the inequitable access to the weapons needed to fight the pandemic. Addressing the opening of the World Health Organization’s annual assembly of member states on Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres decried the “tsunami of suffering” sparked by the coronavirus crisis. He pointed out that more than 3.4 million people have died and some 500 million jobs have disappeared since the disease first surfaced in China in late 2019.