The COVID-19 pandemic that has infected more than 16 million people is easily the worst global health emergency the WHO has faced, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday.
Only with strict adherence to health measures, from wearing masks to avoiding crowds, would the world manage to beat it, Tedros said at a virtual news briefing from the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
“Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they are not, cases go up,” he said, praising Canada, China, Germany and South Korea for controlling outbreaks.
Photo: Reuters
Resurgences of COVID-19 in various regions, including where nations thought they had controlled the disease, are alarming the world, with deaths nearing 650,000.
WHO emergencies program Director Mike Ryan said far more important than definitions of second waves, new peaks and localized clusters, was the need for nations around the world to keep up strict health restrictions such as physical distancing.
“Continuing to keep international borders sealed is not necessarily a sustainable strategy for the world’s economy, for the world’s poor, or for anybody else,” he said.
“It is going to be almost impossible for individual countries to keep their borders shut for the foreseeable future,” he said, pointing out that “economies have to open up, people have to work, trade has to resume.”
When it comes to COVID-19, it is impossible to have a “global one size fits all policy,” because outbreaks are developing differently in different countries, he said.
While countries with rampant community transmission might need to use the blunt instrument of lockdowns to gain control of the situation, others should be burrowing down to get a clear overview of where and how the virus is spreading at a local level.
“What is clear is pressure on the virus pushes the numbers down. Release that pressure and cases creep back up,” he said.
Countries are going to have to do more to reduce the spread of the virus within their borders, Ryan said.
“The more we understand the disease, the more we have a microscope on the virus, the more precise we can be in surgically removing it from our communities,” he added.
Tedros emphasized the priority remained saving lives.
“We have to suppress transmission, but at the same time we have to identify the vulnerable groups and save lives, keeping the death rates if possible to zero, if not to a minimum,” he said, praising Japan and Australia in that respect.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said that instead of expecting drastic measures to keep the virus in check, people need to adapt their behaviors for the long haul.
“What we’re going to have to figure out ... is what our new normal looks like?” she told reporters.
“Our new normal includes physical distancing from others, [and] wearing masks where appropriate,” she said. “Our new normal includes us knowing where this virus is each and every day, where we live, where we work, where we want to travel.”
In related news, US President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien has tested positive for COVID-19, according to people familiar with his situation.
O’Brien came down with the virus after a family event and has been isolating at home while still running the National Security Council, doing most of his work by telephone, one of the people said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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