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Believe it or not, countries like Italy and Spain with more than 1.5 lakh Covid-19 cases and thousands of deaths each are not classified as being in the community transmission stage in the WHO’s daily situation reports. And yet, Syria with just 25 cases and two deaths is in this stage.
How is this possible? Starting Apr 9, the WHO reports what countries themselves define as their stage of transmission. Even Italy, Spain, France and the UK are not among the 22 countries in the “community transmission” category. All of them, and most European countries, are listed as pending classification.
Prior to that date, the transmission classification was based on WHO’s analysis of official data on cases and deaths reported by countries. The daily situation report puts out a list of countries with data on the total number of confirmed cases, new cases, total deaths and new deaths and the country’s transmission classificati