AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP
The World Health Organization on Wednesday urged “extreme caution” for international locations contemplating lifting COVID-19 restrictions, warning that prime vaccination charges wouldn’t cease transmission of the virus from rising.
The UN well being company urged governments to not squander hard-won features and return to scenes of overwhelmed hospitals and exhausted well being employees.
Asked about England’s plans to ditch most of its coronavirus restrictions from July 19, WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan stated: “I would urge extreme caution in the complete lifting of public health and social measures at this time, because there are consequences for that.”
WHO figures present that globally, after a decline in newly reported instances for seven consecutive weeks, there was a slight enhance in new instances up to now two weeks.
Cases jumped 30 p.c within the WHO’s European area over the previous week.
European international locations have administered 70 vaccine doses per 100 inhabitants, in accordance with AFP figures.
“Making assumptions that transmission will not increase because we’re opening up, because of vaccine, is a false assumption,” stated Ryan.
“Transmission will enhance if you open up, as a result of we don’t have vaccines in all people… and we’re nonetheless undecided to what extent vaccination protects towards the power to be contaminated or have onward transmission.
“With increased transmission in the community, we then put our most vulnerable at risk again.”
– ‘Open up very carefully’ –
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday revealed plans to carry most of England’s authorized coronavirus restrictions, together with face masks and social distancing, urging private duty relatively than authorities edict.
Ryan confused he didn’t wish to touch upon particular international locations, however stated: “The idea that everyone is protected… and everything goes back to normal, I think right now is a very dangerous assumption anywhere in the world.”
And that included Europe, the place “we’ve seen wave after wave of cases,” he stated.
“We would ask governments to be actually cautious at this second to not lose the features we’ve made. To open up very rigorously.
“I would hope that in the European environment we won’t see a return to the overwhelmed hospitals and the exhausted health workers. But that’s not a given.”
Ryan stated international locations lifting restrictions wanted to comply with the information and provides themselves the choice of rowing again if it resulted in damaging penalties.
Opening up with low vaccine protection and variants circulating “is a real toxic mixture for your hospitals filling up again, and this is something that must absolutely be avoided”, he added.
Ryan flatly rejected the notion that it could be higher to carry restrictions and danger triggering a recent wave of infections in the summertime than doing so within the winter months.
“The logic of more people being infected is better, is, I think, logic that has proven its moral emptiness and its epidemiologic stupidity,” he stated.