It’s the socialising... not the new variant, says WHO chief
IRELAND’S recent surge in Covid-19 cases is due to an increase in socialising and not the new strains of the virus, a WHO official has said. Dr Mike Ryan, head of the WHO emergencies programme, said Ireland has seen one of the world’s steepest rises in cases over recent months. However, he praised the Government’s ‘immediate action’, saying it had caused the positivity rate and the number of new cases to drop. At a press briefing on Monday, t he Sli go native urged countries that have the virus under control to ‘do what you’ve done before’. He added: ‘I see it in my own country, in Ireland, which has suffered a massive increase in cases over the last number of weeks and has done extremely well in two surges of the disease...
‘[It] has suffered one of the most acute increases in disease incidence of any country in the world over the last number of months and not due to the variant, let me add, but mainly due to increased social mixing and reduction and physical distancing.
‘The Government, the authorities there and the community have taken immediate action over the last two weeks and already the disease number is starting to drop.’
Speaking of the new variants, Dr Ryan said: ‘It’s like adding a substitution in the second half of a football game. It doesn’t change the rules of the game, it doesn’t change what you do.
‘It adds to the challenge you face, because the opposition is bringing on new players.’