“My friends, make no mistake,” warned Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), in an emotion-tinged media briefing at WHO headquarters in Geneva last Thursday.

“The greatest threat we face now is not the virus itself. Rather, it is the lack of leadership and solidarity at the global and national levels. … This is the tragedy that is forcing us to miss many of our friends and lose many lives. We cannot defeat this pandemic as a divided world.”