Look what's happened in China : We've seen a significant drop in cases, huge pressure placed on the virus and a sequential decrease in the number of cases ; that goes against the logic of pandemic. Yet we see in contrast of that, an acceleration of cases in places like South Korea, and therefore we are still in the balance.

Mike Ryan

There also is the issue that we have a massive global shortage, right now the people most at risk from this virus are frontline health workers who are exposed to the virus every second of every day. The thought of them not having masks is horrific.

There are problems in the supply chain all along that chain. The simple issue is demand, there are shortages of PPE, shortages of ventilators and other products for the medical response to Covid. We also have to avoid shortages in other medical supplies, as supply chains come under strain.

Once we've suppressed the transmission, we have to go after the virus. We have to take the fight to the virus.

We have to make sure that it's absolutely safe... we are talking at least a year, the vaccines will come, but we need to get out and do what we need to do now.

What we really need to focus on is finding those who are sick, those who have the virus, and isolate them, find their contacts and isolate them, the danger right now with the lockdowns ... if we don't put in place the strong public health measures now, when those movement restrictions and lockdowns are lifted, the danger is the disease will jump back up.

Blanket travel measures in their own right will do nothing to protect an individual state.

But I also think the Iranian system is switching on. We are seeing a much more all-of-government approach...with a national action plan now, with 100,000 workers committed to this plan, it is much better that we understand the extent of the problem. So we commend the move towards more aggressive, targeted surveillance and we hope that will lead to the kind of control measures that will help push this virus back.

As long as that's the case.

The government is very anxious as you can imagine, as all governments are, to make preparations and are seeking our technical and operational assistance to help them get ready.

Right now, the strategic and tactical approach in China is the correct one.

We have not offered advice to the IOC for the Olympics one way or the other, and neither would we. It is not the role of WHO to call off or not call off any event.

(That) is to a great extent due to a huge public health operation in China, that ... gives us an opportunity for containment.

Bringing everybody together I think will give us a leap-frog moment in terms of coherence, priority-setting.

This is not just simply scientific discourse, there are big issues to do with how that whole process is governed.

The unnecessary, unhelpful profiling of individuals based on ethnicity is utterly and completely unacceptable and it needs to stop.

And I believe the authorities in Taiwan are working very closely with China in the mainland and I believe there have been joint missions and joint approaches to the response.

We are in agreement with Chinese authorities who have been clear and transparent that there is evidence of human-to-human transmission, the primary issue is to limit (that) human-to-human transmission.

That has created the perfect storm that has allowed virus to get away from us and go on underground.

It is a single transmission chain but it is worrying.

Ebola was retreating and now it is likely to resurge.