Skip to content
Subscriber Only
Opinion
Therese Raphael

Why the WHO Won’t Call the Coronavirus a Pandemic

The question of whether to call Covid-19 a pandemic goes to the heart of the World Health Organization’s internal conflicts.

He wants to control the narrative, not just the virus.

He wants to control the narrative, not just the virus.

Photographer: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

The World Health Organization still isn’t ready to call the coronavirus a pandemic. This says more about the WHO than it does about Covid-19.

“That word is scary, and it's used in movies, [but] that word is not a proxy for a deadly apocalyptic virus,” Jennifer Nuzzo from Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security said in a recent briefing. On the basic WHO definition — the worldwide spread of a new disease — Nuzzo and many others think Covid-19 fits the bill. So why not say so?