World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the COVID-19 pandemic is not even close to being over.

Tedros observed six months after China first alerted the WHO to a novel respiratory infection, 10 million confirmed infections, and 500,000 deaths have been reached.

Ghebreyesus said, "We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is that this is not even close to being over. Although many countries have made some progress globally, the pandemic is actually speeding up".

The head of the WHO's emergencies programme, Mike Ryan, said that tremendous progress had been made towards finding a safe and effective vaccine to prevent infection, but there was still no guarantee the effort would succeed.

Meanwhile, countries could fight the spread of the disease by testing, isolating confirmed cases and tracking their contacts and said Japan, South Korea and Germany for their "comprehensive, sustained strategy" have been successfully fighting against the virus.