WHO responds to report of COVID-19 cases at the organization’s HQ in Geneva

During a press conference on Monday, World Health Organization official Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove responded to a report about coronavirus cases at their Geneva headquarters. She said that 65 positive cases associated with staff there were reported since the start of the pandemic, and five cases in the last week.

Video transcript

- We see the reports of Associated Press that there is a cluster of infections going on in WHO. Could you clarify about how many cases in WHO headquarters and how serious the situation is? Thank you.

MARIA VAN KERKOVE: I will. Thank you, Toma, for the question. It's nice to hear your voice again.

So yes, we-- as you know, as all workplaces, we are following infections, and we're monitoring the health of all of our staff all over the world. We have had cases that have been staff members.

And yes, I did also see the AP story. There have been 65 cases associated with HQ staff, headquarter staff, not all of which have been on the premises. There have been 36. Those 65 are from the start of the pandemic. So let us be very clear on that. And clearly the AP is reporting on an email that was sent to staff about that.

So those are 65 cases reported since the beginning of the year. 36 have had access to the premises, so have been on the premises.

As I'm sure you know, we've reduced-- greatly reduced our staff in the building. We're working in these different types of phases, depending on the epidemiologic situation in the areas that are around us, as most workplaces are doing. And we have had some cases that have been associated with the premises.

We do have some cases in the last week that are linked together. We don't know if they're an actual cluster. So what we do when we have any cases is we first make sure that they have access to a test, make sure that they have access to appropriate care. All are doing well. All have mild disease or asymptomatic. And we are tracing back, and we're also tracing forward.

So what we do is we carry out contact tracing to see who they came in contact with to see if there are any further onward transmission, as most countries are doing, but we also look back to see what did they do in the previous 14 days, for example.

And so we do have cases that are linked within a team, but there are possible ways in which they were infected outside of the premises. So we're still doing the epidemiologic investigation with that-- with these individuals, but they are all doing well.

Sorry, I need to come back in because I'm being asked to clarify. So when I said that there were 36 cases associated with the premises, that's since the beginning of the pandemic. There have been five cases testing positive in the last week. So we just want to clarify that point.

But also to say, as Mike said, we're normal human beings. We do our grocery shopping. We do our-- we have to take our kids to school. We are living in an area right now that has very high incidence surrounding us. And so we as individuals also need to take into account the measures to keep ourselves safe. What we recommend to you and what you hear us saying every single day is what we say to our own staff, to our loved ones.

But just to clarify that it's been 65 cases associated with HQ since the beginning of the pandemic, 36 of which have had access to the premises, and only five in the last week.

MICHAEL RYAN: Could I just further clarify, Maria, because we used the word associated there. To all those amateur epidemiologists out there, that does not mean that transmission occurred on these premises. Those individuals were people who were designated as working on site, and therefore they were left home to self-isolate and their contacts traced outside. So just when we use the word associated, I'm sure we'll get a lot of feedback. This last cluster under investigation, to our knowledge, is the only evidence of potential transmission on this campus over the last 10 months.