‘Wake up’ call on virus

WHO warns on cavalier attitude to restarting economies

THE World Health Organisation has urged countries hit by serious coronavirus outbreaks to “wake up” to the realities instead of bickering, and to “take control”.

“People need to wake up. The data is not lying. The situation on the ground is not lying,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said in Geneva.

Touching almost every country on Earth since it emerged in China late last year, the coronavirus has infected at least 10.8 million people and killed 521,000.

The news is increasingly grim across the Americas, with the US posting a record 53,000 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, and the number of infections in Latin America overtaking those in Europe for the first time.

Asked about the dire situations in nations such as Brazil and Mexico, which have been moving away from lockdowns despite ballooning numbers of infections and deaths, Mr Ryan cautioned “too many countries are ignoring what the data is telling them”.

“There are good economic reasons that the countries need to bring their economies back online,” he said.

“It’s understandable, but you can’t ignore the problem either. The problem will not magically go away.”

While he acknowledged countries facing explosive outbreaks had some “pretty stark choices” ahead, he insisted “it is never too late in an epidemic to take control”.

Instead of placing a nation under lockdown, he suggested countries could try to break down the problem.

It could be possible to loosen restrictions in areas with lower transmission rates and still contain the outbreak through measures such as physical distancing, handwashing, testing, isolating cases and contact tracing.

But in areas where the virus was spreading uncontrollably, strict measures could be unavoidable, he said.

“If countries proceed with opening up without the capacity to cope with the likely caseload, then you end up in a worst-case scenario,” Mr Ryan warned. “If the health system stops coping, more people will die.”

He said there could be places in Mexico and in other countries “where it may be important to slow down or to reverse some of the measures aimed at opening up society”.

In the case of Brazil, which counts almost 1.5 million confirmed cases, second only to the US, Mr Ryan said the numbers had “stabilised”.

He also stressed that despite “fighting a large number of cases for a long time now”, Brazil’s hospitals and intensive care units had not yet been overwhelmed.