| Despite early warnings back in December, the US has yet been unable to provide adequate testing for the Coronavirus, with few Americans actually been able to obtain testing.
Actor Tom Hanks and his wife have been tested and diagnosed with the virus in Australia, with testing likely unavailable in the US.
In West Virginia only eight people have been tested, while the WHO has declared a pandemic, rapidly spreading across the USA.
President Donald Trump has been down-playing the virus for weeks, politically polarizing it.
It is a virus that could affect millions of Americans, overcrowding hospitals and killing many of them.
Expressing alarm both about mounting infections and inadequate government responses, the World Health Organization declared Wednesday that the global coronavirus crisis is now a pandemic, but added that it's not too late for countries to act.
By reversing course and using the charged word âpandemicâ that it had previously shied away from, the U.N. health agency sought to shock lethargic countries into pulling out all the stops.
âWe have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,â said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief.
"All countries can still change the course of this pandemic. If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response," he said. âWe are deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.â
The WHO said Iran and Italy are the new front lines of the battle against the virus that started in China.
âTheyâre suffering but I guarantee you other countries will be in that situation soon," said Dr. Mike Ryan, the WHO's emergencies chief.
He added that the agency thought long and hard about labeling the crisis a pandemic â meaning a new virus causing sustained outbreaks in multiple regions of the world.
The risk of employing the term, Ryan said, is âif people use it as an excuse to give up.â
But the benefit is âpotentially of galvanizing the world to fight.â
Underscoring the mounting challenge: The case count outside China has multiplied 13-fold over the last two weeks to over 118,000, with the disease now responsible for nearly 4,291 deaths, WHO said.
With officials saying that Europe has become the new epicenter, Italyâs cases soared again, to 12,462 infections and 827 deaths â numbers second only to China.
âIf you want to be blunt, Europe is the new China," said Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Italy weighed imposing even tighter restrictions on daily life and announced billions in financial relief Wednesday to cushion economic shocks from the coronavirus, its latest efforts to adjust to the fast-evolving crisis that silenced the usually bustling heart of the Catholic faith, St. Peterâs Square.
In Iran, by far the hardest-hit country in the Middle East, the senior vice president and two other Cabinet ministers were reported to have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. Iran reported another jump in deaths, by 62 to 354 â behind only China and Italy.
In Italy, Premier Giuseppe Conte said he would consider requests from Lombardy, Italy's hardest-hit region, to toughen the already extraordinary anti-virus lockdown that was extended nationwide Tuesday. Lombardy wants to shut down nonessential businesses and reduce public transportation.
These measures would be on top of travel and social restrictions that imposed an eerie hush on cities and towns across the country. Police enforced rules that customers stay 1 meter (3 feet) apart and ensured that businesses closed by 6 p.m.
Still, the effectiveness of such measures as travel restrictions and quarantines will likely drop substantially and be called into question as COVID-19 spreads globally, making it impossible for countries to keep the virus out. Health officials will also need to be more flexible in their coordinated response efforts, as the epicenters are likely to shift quickly and dramatically â as the recent eruptions in Iran and Italy have demonstrated.
For most, the coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for a few, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illnesses, including pneumonia. More than 121,000 people have been infected worldwide and over 4,300 have died.
But most people recover. People with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover, the WHO says.
In the Mideast, most of the nearly 10,000 cases are in Iran or involve people who traveled to the country. Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency said they include Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri. Iran's ministers for cultural heritage, handcrafts and tourism, and for industry, mines and business were also infected, the agency said.
In Qatar, cases jumped from 24 to 262. Kuwait announced a two-week shutdown of the country.
For the global economy, virus repercussions were profound, with increasing concerns of wealth- and job-wrecking recessions. U.S. stocks in afternoon trading wiped out more than all the gains from a huge rally a day earlier as Wall Street continues to reel.
Wall Street's plunge followed a steep decline by markets across Asia, where governments there and elsewhere have announced billions of dollars in stimulus funds, including packages revealed in Japan on Tuesday and Australia on Wednesday.
Italy's government announced Wednesday it was dedicating 25 billion euros (nearly $28 billion) to boost anti-virus efforts and soften economic blows, including delaying tax and mortgage payments by families and businesses.
Britainâs government announced a 30 billion-pound ($39 billion) economic stimulus package and the Bank of England slashed its key interest rate by half a percentage point to 0.25%.
Normal life was increasingly upended, with Pope Francis live-streaming prayers from the privacy of his Vatican library as police barred access to St. Peter's Square, emptying it of tens of thousands of people who attend the weekly papal address.
In the U.S., the caseload passed 1,000, and outbreaks on both sides of the country stirred alarm.
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, vying to take on President Donald Trump in the presidential election, canceled rallies Tuesday and left open the possibility that future campaign events could be impacted. Trump's campaign insisted it would proceed as normal, although Vice President Mike Pence conceded future rallies would be evaluated âon a day to day basis.â
In Europe, Spain's number of cases surged Wednesday past the 2,000 mark and Belgium, Bulgaria, Sweden, Albania and Ireland all announced their first virus-related deaths.
And at a Congressional hearing in Washington Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, sounded an alarm: âBottom line, it's going to get worse."
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that if the virus is not halted by vaccines and cures, up to 70% of the countryâs 83 million people could ultimately become infected.
Germany has about 1,300 confirmed infections and Merkelâs comments fit a pattern of government officials using sobering warnings to convince people to protect themselves by washing their hands and not gathering in large numbers.
âItâs terrifying,â said Silvana Gomez, a student at Harvard University, where undergraduates were told to leave campus by Sunday. âIâm definitely very scared right now about what the next couple days, the next couple weeks look like.â
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