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Former UK PM Tony Blair questions Trump's leadership in coronavirus pandemic

Europe Materials 25 May 2020 20:48 (UTC +04:00)
Former UK PM Tony Blair questions Trump's leadership in coronavirus pandemic

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair questioned U.S. President Donald Trump's leadership in facing "terrifying" novel coronavirus pandemic and expressed his worry about the lack of global coordination in tackling the crisis, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

"The worry I have that an absence of global coordination and global leadership that's necessary for it is a huge problem," the Daily Mail quoted Blair as saying, citing his recent interview with NBC News.

Blair, who served from 1997 to 2007 as British prime minister, said it's important to bring the world together when facing the pandemic.

With "global coordination", Blair said leaders could find a vaccine together, accelerate the development of therapeutics and testing capability, and organize economic measures to keep the international economy afloat, Daily Mail reported.

"It's that global coordination, the absence of which means that each individual country's less effective at dealing with the disease. That's the thing that worries me," he said.

Blair said in Western countries people are well-informed about the disease but not sufficiently informed about the economic collapse it could trigger.

"The safest thing for any political leader to do is just keep the lockdown because the risk of COVID-19 spreading is going to be minimal, but on the other hand if you're looking responsibly into how you get through this into the medium term without the economic wreckage being absolutely devastated," he was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

"The countries that locked down fast and that are building, testing, tracing and tracking capability fast, that then enables you to be more bold on the economy," he said in the interview with NBC.

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