WHO has warned that peaks in coronavirus transmission are due to young people.
Geneva, Switzerland:
The World Health Organization warned on Thursday that peaks in coronavirus transmission in a number of countries were due to young people “letting their guard down.”
“Young people are not invincible,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference in Geneva.
While the pandemic, which has killed more than 17 million people worldwide, has had a disproportionate impact on the elderly and those with pre-existing illnesses, he stressed that “young people are also at risk”.
He lamented that a major challenge in trying to contain the new coronavirus is to “convince young people of this risk”.
He said there was evidence that “spikes in cases in some countries are due in part to young people letting their guard down during the northern hemisphere summer.”
The WHO technical officer for COVID-19 Maria Van Kerkhove in particular lamented that nightclubs in a number of places have become “amplifiers” of transmission.
Tedros insisted that “young people should take the same precautions to protect themselves and others as everyone else”.
“Young people can be infected, young people can die and young people can pass the virus on to others.”
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
