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The World Health Organization has warned leaders not to rely on COVID-19 closures as the primary method of addressing outbreaks after previously saying that countries should be careful how quickly they reopen, which will be adds to the statements made by officials causing confusion.
WHO special envoy Dr. David Nabarro said such restrictive measures should only be used as a last resort in a video interview with Andrew Neil for The Spectator. Nabarro is the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Food Security and Nutrition and the Coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement. He also serves as the senior coordinator of the United Nations system for avian and pandemic influenza.
“We, at the World Health Organization, do not advocate blockades as the main means of controlling this virus,” Nabarro said. “The only time we think a lockdown is justified is to buy time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but overall, we prefer not to.”
Nabarro points out that the strict restrictions cause significant damage, particularly in the global economy, adding that such blockades have severely impacted countries that depend on tourism.
“The confinements only have one consequence that you should never, never underestimate, and that is to make poor people much poorer.” he said. “Just look at what happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people are not on vacation.” Nabarro said.
“Look at what has happened to small farmers around the world. Look what is happening with the poverty levels. It looks like we could well double world poverty by next year. We may have at least a doubling of child malnutrition. “ Nabarro adds.
Previously, the UN agency had warned countries not to lift the blockades too early during the initial wave of the outbreak.
“The last thing any country needs is to open schools and businesses, only to be forced to close them again due to a resurgence,”Said Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urging countries to intensify other measures, such as widespread testing and contact tracing, to help support a safe reopening and prevent future closures. “We need to get to a sustainable situation where we have adequate control of this virus without ending our lives completely, or without going from one closure to another, which has a hugely damaging impact on societies.,” he said.
From the beginning, when cases and deaths began to pile up, it made sense to enforce the closures, this gave countries time to develop a plan to address the outbreak with policies such as distancing, testing, protecting the vulnerable, hygiene campaigns. proper and obtaining PPE. to help slow the spread of the virus, but it should not be the intention to keep everything closed.
Unfortunately, the United States did not come out of the initial brief shutdown with a clear and coherent plan for early troubles to flatten the curve. In fact, the US appeared to be more disorganized without adequate public health systems and adequate healthcare capacity in some places, or sufficient PPE, resulting in the closure being extended for another 30 days.
There was never a real coordinated national response to this outbreak, each state did its thing. Regardless, the WHO says that lockdowns shouldn’t be the primary response to a pandemic. But in some places, it seems as if officials have forgotten that these closures are not a sustainable end solution and were only meant to be temporary while an action plan was being developed, however, to this day, months and months later. , many still have blockages in place and the economy is undoubtedly suffering along with public mental health and welfare. Looking at the previous outbreaks, things were handled very differently.
While at first glance it may seem that the WHO is changing its position, but if you look at the interview with Nabarro, he didn’t really seem to say anything new, he just said the same old things about the overlapping of various policies in a coordinated way. However, yes, he urged leaders to stop relying on lockdowns as their primary control method, noting the economic damage that can occur. “We really appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary method of control”.
