Give Time For Lockdowns To Work Or Virus Cannot Be Beaten - WHO Epidemiologist

Give Time for Lockdowns to Work or Virus Cannot Be Beaten - WHO Epidemiologist

Countries that have invested in shutting their economies down to try and curb the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) need to be patient in letting the measures to work if they have any hope of beating the pandemic, World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist Mike Ryan said on Friday

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th April, 2020) Countries that have invested in shutting their economies down to try and curb the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) need to be patient in letting the measures to work if they have any hope of beating the pandemic, World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist Mike Ryan said on Friday.

"We need to get ahead of the virus," Ryan told an online news conference hosted by the WHO and participated by officials of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. "If we are in control, we can protect our economies, but if we lurch from lockdown to poor control and back to lockdown and back to poor control, that is not what anybody needs right now. So the investment we needed to make the lockdowns has to be given some time."

Ryan said the pandemic has, in a sense, given global society a chance to rebuild care systems and human values.

"This is precious time not only to strengthen the healthcare system but also community education, and if we do that, we have a chance of transitioning back into an economic and social life that may in some senses not be the same again but maybe more caring and engaged with better universal access to health care, more social justice and more care for each other," he said. "That won't be a bad society to go back to, from my perspective."

The COVID-19 has infected more than 1 million people worldwide and killed over 50,000.

Authorities around the world have locked down some three billion people in their homes, either forcibly or through moral suasion, to contain the viral outbreak. The measures have effectively shut down an estimated 92 percent of the global economy.