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For the billions of people now living under some form of stay-at-home or locked-in orders, experts from the World Health Organization have a new guideline: we should be prepared to “change our behaviors for the foreseeable future”, They say, as the agency updates its advice on when to lift COVID-19 block orders.
The question of when to facilitate closings is a hot topic, as economic output is stagnant in many countries, including the United States, now the epicenter of the global pandemic.
“One of the main things we have learned in recent months about COVID-19 is that the faster all cases are found, analyzed, isolated and cared for, the more difficult it is for the virus to spread,” said WHO Direct0r-General. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus via Twitter when the guideline was released. “This principle will save lives and mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic.”
The coronavirus has killed tens of thousands of people. It has also reshaped society and disrupted the daily lives of people around the world, including 1.4 billion children whose education has now been derailed due to closings, the WHO says. The pandemic has caused massive losses for large and small businesses, and has forced millions of people to lose their jobs.
While full national blockades remain rare, at least 82 countries have some form of blockade, according to UNICEF.
The global economy is now predicted to reduce by 3% this year, says the International Monetary Fund in its most recent analysis. That includes a contraction of almost 6% for the US economy. USA
Just released: April 2020 World Economic Outlook. The global economy is projected to contract sharply by -3% in 2020 as a result of the # COVID-19 pandemic, a much worse contraction than during the 2008-09 financial crisis. Read the latest #WEO https://t.co/93xXDRsg3B pic.twitter.com/LODuvMsrbA
– IMF (@IMFNews) April 14, 2020
Despite all the personal and financial pain that the coronavirus has caused, WHO officials say that in many places, it is too early to return to normal. And because any premature attempt to restart economies could cause secondary spikes in COVID-19 cases, they caution that the process must be deliberate and widely coordinated.
“You can’t replace the lock with anything,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO emergency program, in a recent briefing. Stressing the importance of a well-informed and committed population, he added: “We are going to have to change our behaviors for the foreseeable future.”
Any government that wants to start lifting the restrictions, said WHO’s Tedros, must first meet six conditions:
one) Transmission of the disease is under control.
two) Health systems are able to “detect, test, isolate and treat every case and track every contact”
3) The risks of hot spots are minimized in vulnerable places, such as nursing homes.
4) Schools, workplaces and other essential places have established preventive measures.
5) The risk of importing new cases “can be managed”
6) Communities are fully educated, committed and able to live under a new normal.
The worldwide number of COVID-19 cases is rapidly approaching the 2 million mark, including more than 120,000 people who have died, according to a COVID-19 dashboard created by the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering.
The number of new cases continues to increase dramatically in the US. USA, where disagreements over the possible restart of economies recently led at least 10 states to join regional coalitions. The governors of those states say they, not President Trump or the federal government, will determine when to resume normal activities, according to health and science statistics.
Even where governments can lift some shutdown conditions, Ryan said, “Healthcare workers will have to continue to have protective equipment and we will have to continue to have intensive care beds on standby, because as we get out of these blocking situations, we can see a jump backwards in the cases “.
The objective is to reduce restrictions so that governments, in communities, cities and nations, can avoid a cycle of new COVID-19 outbreaks.
“We don’t want to move from confinement to nothing to confinement to nothing,” Ryan said. “We need to have a much more stable exit strategy that allows us to move carefully and persistently on the blockade.”
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