The UN agency that flies crucial medical supplies and aid in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic will be forced to ground its planes in a month if it does not receive a large injection of cash, its head said Thursday.
David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, told The Associated Press that his agency needs $965 million for the flights through the end of the year.
He said it only has about $150 million, enough to keep flying until the third week of July.
Beasley repeated an earlier estimate that the number of people pushed to the brink of starvation could double by the end of the year, to 265 million, and said that number could get worse.
He said his agency reaches about 100 million people, and about one-third are solely dependent on food aid.
The World Health Organization chief expected the number of COVID-19 cases to hit 10 million and the death toll from the disease to reach 500,000 by next week.
Speaking Thursday during a videoconference with European Parliament members, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that although the crisis has improved across Europe, “globally, it’s still getting worse.”
Tedros said more than 4 million cases of the disease have been reported in the last month.
