Covid-19: severe warning from WHO as countries prepare to lift restrictions during pandemic

The World Health Organization has issued a stern warning to countries seeking to ease their Covid-19 restrictions as the the pandemic is raging.

The pandemic roadmap in England made headlines this week after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans to end social distancing, mask wearing and lockdown by July 19.

Johnson also said that the the pandemic was “far from over” and that the United Kingdom “have to come to terms, unfortunately, with more deaths from Covid-19 ”.

The UK’s plans have been called “Barbaric experiment” by a New Zealand expert. the Government and Opposition also rejected the idea, with Chris Hipkins and Judith Collins saying New Zealanders would not accept that mindset here.

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A senior WHO official urged countries to slowly lift their Covid-19 restrictions so as not “to lose the gains that [they] did”.

WHO Emergency Program Executive Director Dr Mike Ryan spoke at a briefing which aimed to urge countries to share Covid-19 vaccines.

During the briefing, Ryan was asked to respond to the UK’s reopening and lifting of restrictions. Ryan stressed that he did not want to comment on specific countries, adding that each nation has to decide for itself. But he said the idea that everyone is protected and that everything will go back to normal was “a very dangerous assumption all over the world.”

This also included Europe, where “we’ve seen wave after wave of cases,” Ryan was reported as said at the press conference.

Ryan’s warning comes amid renewed concern over the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, which is currently be seen in outbreaks in some Australian states.

Ryan added that he believed British scientists were “very aware of the threat posed by the variants, especially the Delta variant” and would open cautiously, Reuters reported told him.

He urged global governments to keep in mind that transmission would likely increase after opening, as not everyone is vaccinated, and “we still don’t know how well vaccination protects against the ability to be infected or be transmitted “.

“With increased transmission in the community, we are once again putting our most vulnerable at risk” The times of the straits reported it saying.

Addressing the speed of plans to reopen some countries, Ryan said a combination of low vaccination rates, easing restrictions and circulating variants threatened a “toxic mix” for hospitals, The Guardian reported told him.

In response to a question, Ryan said the idea of ​​letting people get infected with Covid-19 sooner rather than later was “epidemiological nonsense”, The Guardian reported it saying.

On Thursday (New Zealand time), the WHO announced that there had been four million deaths due to Covid-19 recorded since the start of the pandemic.

At Report WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the milestone was “tragic” and likely underestimated the overall toll.

He added that the world was at a “perilous point in this pandemic”.