Michael Ryan said, “The problem will not magically go away.”
Geneva:
On Friday, the World Health Organization urged countries affected by serious coronavirus outbreaks to “wake up” to the realities on the ground instead of bickering and “taking control”.
“People have to wake up. The data does not lie. The situation on the ground does not lie,” WHO emergency director Michael Ryan told reporters during a briefing organized by the association of UN correspondents in Geneva.
Affecting almost every country on Earth since its appearance in China late last year, the coronavirus has affected at least 10.8 million people and killed 521,000 worldwide.
The Americas are the hardest hit region, with most cases and deaths recorded in the United States, and with figures skyrocketing in several Latin American countries.
Asked about the dire situations in countries like Brazil and Mexico, which have moved away from blockages despite an increasing number of infections and deaths, Ryan warned that “too many countries ignore what the data tells them” .
“There are good economic reasons why countries have to get their economies back online,” he said.
“It’s understandable, but you can’t ignore the problem either. The problem won’t magically go away.”
While acknowledging that countries facing explosive outbreaks have “fairly austere choices” to come, he stressed that “it is never too late in an epidemic to take control”.
– ‘Worst case scenario’ –
Instead of putting an entire nation under lockdown, he suggested that countries could try to solve the problem.
It may be possible to loosen restrictions in areas with lower transmission rates and to contain the epidemic with things like physical distance, hand washing, testing, case isolation and case finding. contacts.
But in areas where the virus is spreading uncontrollably, strict measures may be inevitable, he said.
“If countries continue to open without having the capacity to cope with the likely workload, then you are in the worst case,” warned Ryan.
“If the healthcare system stops coping, more people will die.”
He said there may be places in Mexico and other countries “where it may be important to slow down or reverse some of the measures to open up society.”
“It’s about: can you control the transmission by any means other than the transmission? If you cannot, you may have no alternative” to locking.
In the case of Brazil, which has almost 1.5 million confirmed cases, just behind the United States, Ryan said that the figures had “stabilized”, which means that they are not increasing more as strongly, but that they “continue to increase”.
He also stressed that despite “fighting a large number of cases for a long time”, hospitals and intensive care units in Brazil had not yet been submerged.
“We want to see them step up their efforts and we want to see more progress,” he said, “but we must also pay tribute to the Brazilian health system for its ability to cope with what has been a long battle. against this virus. “
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
