The Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, said on Monday the coronavirus is 10 times deadlier than swine flu which caused a global pandemic in 2009.
Ghebreyesus, who revealed this at a virtual news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, said the virus could spread more easily in crowded environments like nursing homes.
He said: “We know that early case-finding, testing, isolating caring for every case and tracing every contact is essential for stopping transmission.
“We know that in some countries, cases are doubling every three to four days.”
According to him, while COVID-19 accelerates very fast, it decelerates much more slowly; in other words, the way down is much slower than the way up.
The WHO chief added: “That means control measures must be lifted slowly, and with control. It cannot happen all at once.
“Control measures can only be lifted if the right public health measures are in place, including the significant capacity for contact tracing.
“But while some countries are considering how to ease restrictions, others are considering whether to introduce them – especially many low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
“In countries with large poor populations, the stay-at-home orders and other restrictions used in some high-income countries may not be practical.
“Many poor people, migrants, and refugees are already living in overcrowded conditions with few resources and little access to health care.
He said reports from around the world described how many people were in danger of being left without access to food.
The WHO director-general said that schools had closed for an estimated 1.4 billion children, adding that this had halted their education, opened some to increased risk of abuse, and deprived many children of their primary source of food.
“As I have said many times, physical distancing restrictions are only part of the equation, and there are many other basic public health measures that need to be put in place, “ he concluded.
{NAN} {Vanguard Nig News}
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