Leaders weigh reopening risks without a vaccine
NEW YORK (AP):
ON A weekend when many pandemic-weary people emerged from weeks of lockdown, leaders in the United States (US) and Europe weighed the risks and rewards of lifting COVID-19 restrictions knowing that a vaccine could take years to develop.
In separate stark warnings, two major European leaders bluntly told their citizens that the world needs to adapt to living with the coronavirus and cannot wait to be saved by a vaccine.
“We are confronting this risk, and we need to accept it, otherwise we would never be able to relaunch,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said, heeding a push by regional leaders to allow restaurants, bars and beach facilities to open Monday, weeks ahead of an earlier timetable.
In the US, images of crowded bars, beaches and boardwalks suggested some weren’t heeding warnings to safely enjoy reopened spaces while limiting the risks of spreading infection.
SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES
A member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, wouldn’t second-guess state and local officials as they decide whether to let restaurants and other businesses reopen. He said the lockdown measures also carry “serious health consequences”, including the risk of suicide, delayed cardiac procedures and cancer screenings.
“I think in any individual instance you’re going to see people doing things that are irresponsible,” Azar told CNN on Sunday. “That’s part of the freedom we have here in America.”
The warnings by Italy’s Conte and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson came as governments worldwide and many US states struggled with restarting economies blindsided by the pandemic. With 36 million newly unemployed in the US alone, economic pressures are building even as authorities acknowledge that reopening risks setting off new waves of infections and deaths.
’’We are facing a calculated risk, in the awareness ... that the epidemiological curve could go back up,” Conte said, adding that Italy could “not afford” to wait until a vaccine was developed. Health experts say the world could be months, if not years, away from having a vaccine available to everyone despite the scientific gold rush now on to create one.
Britain’s Johnson, who was hospitalised last month with a serious bout of COVID-19, speculated Sunday that a vaccine may not be developed at all, despite the huge global effort to produce one.
“I said we would throw everything we could at finding a vaccine,” Johnson wrote in the Mail newspaper on Sunday. “There remains a very long way to go, and I must be frank that a vaccine might not come to fruition.”