[ad_1]
Europe is suffering a brutal second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, with several major economies once again locked in after a brief respite over the summer. Last week, Italy joined a growing list of countries with more than a million registered cases of the virus, Poland’s National Stadium was transformed into a field hospital, and Spain declared a state of national emergency that could extend up to 2021. The number of cases in the continent currently exceeds 14 million, and hospital systems are stretched almost to the limit.
However, bits of good news have started to emerge. Several heavily affected countries may be experiencing a turnaround: although infection rates remain high, Germany has noticed the “first signs” that the curve is flattening, while the virus reproduction rate (R0) recently fell below 1 in France. Even in Belgium, which was recently so ill that coronavirus-positive nurses in Liège were asked to continue working while asymptomatic, the situation is slowly stabilizing after daily new infections fell 40 percent week-over-week.
With the holiday season approaching, increasing pressure on policymakers to reopen economies before the end of the year, ensuring that the right tools are in place will be essential if a devastating third wave is to be avoided. That said, implementing reliable COVID-19 testing regimens has already proven much more difficult than health authorities might have anticipated, and a persistent spate of virus-related scams has put a further brake on attempts by the Public health authorities control the spread of the deadly virus.
One such scandal recently emerged within Europe’s decimated travel industry, where a criminal gang was found to be selling false negative COVID-19 evidence to passengers departing from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport amid stricter immigration rules. . The forged certificates bore the names of real Parisian medical laboratories, and the scheme was only discovered after a passenger bound for Ethiopia was found to be carrying a false certificate. For Europe to safely emerge from this latest deadlock, independent and reliable verification of health information must be the cornerstone of any new policy.
Safer and more convenient COVID test results
Fortunately, several promising high-tech solutions have already appeared. CERTUS MyHealthPass from Swiss company SICPA, for example, uses an existing blockchain-based technology to enable universal verification of health credentials, and is currently being tested to help both maritime crews and airline passengers.
The CERTUS solution will be a particularly welcome development for seafarers, who have struggled to perform their regular duties since the start of the pandemic. Many national authorities have questioned the validity of seafarers’ COVID-19 tests and have taken an unreasonably long time to approve their health documents, leaving seafarers stranded on board months after landing. programmed. Furthermore, rejection of travel and health documents often prevents potential replacements from boarding these same vessels, damaging the mental well-being of workers in limbo and totally paralyzing vital transnational operations.
The airline industry, unsurprisingly, is struggling with a similar challenge. Countries are increasingly demanding negative PCR tests to enter, while some are already planning how to integrate coronavirus vaccination certificates into their border control procedures, but scandals like the fake COVID test ring discovered at Charles Airport de Gaulle have increased the international need for: procedures recognized as the technological solution offered by MyHealthPass. The scheme is capable of authenticating both paper documents and digital information to ensure the validity of the COVID-19 test results approved by the WHO. Seafarers, airline staff and international travelers can carry their authenticated digital health pass on their smartphones, allowing for the reopening of essential international services in the short term and helping national and local authorities to anticipate and better prepare for future outbreaks.
Self-isolation is still insufficient
In addition to ensuring that easily verified coronavirus tests and other health information can help open borders and allow normal economic activity to resume as soon as possible, governments should also take advantage of this time to resolve the missing links that have so far. triggered testing and isolation. strategies to fail. If rapid and widespread testing for COVID-19 finally begins to take off, bolstered by more accurate blood tests to detect past infections, authorities must also do more to encourage and compensate populations that may have been exposed to the disease to isolate. to allow these developments to take root properly.
In the months since the intoxicating summer days, a clearer picture of Europe’s failures to control the pandemic has begun to emerge. In the UK, where COVID-19 cases have exceeded 1.3 million, less than a fifth of people reporting coronavirus symptoms complied with national self-isolation regulations, and authorities handed over a negligible handful for fines. for quarantine violations when returning from a high-risk area.
Here again, countries with high scores in handling the coronavirus outbreak have turned to technological solutions to ease the burden of meeting self-isolation requirements and ensuring compliance with current regulations. Taiwan, for example, has become the international gold standard for COVID-19 control measures. After closing international borders and regulating travel in advance, Taiwan has successfully maintained a rigorous contact tracing and technology-enhanced quarantine regime that has helped the island nation keep cases and deaths low. In particular, the Pacific country cleverly implemented an “electronic fence system,” which uses location data from cell phones to ensure that quarantined people remain at home. The technology also provided a solution to the practical and mental health concerns of quarantined people, from offering easy food delivery options to a chatbot developed with the popular LINE messaging app.
European authorities failed over the summer to implement the technological solutions they needed to stop a second wave in its path. This second round of lockdowns has provided them with a new opportunity to build the pillars of a comprehensive and secure strategy for testing and quarantine that could prevent a third wave of the virus.
