Nations must be ready for resurgence of coronavirus: WHO
It warns those that lift restrictions to quickly identify cases to suppress Covid-19
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People wearing face masks at a shopping street in Beijing. Countries like China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore have lifted some of the public health and social measures in a slow and controlled way.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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GENEVA • The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said countries which lift restrictions and open their economies should be ready to quickly identify coronavirus cases if they resurge.
"I think we're going to be in a situation where we may need to lift some of these measures, but be ready to quickly identify those cases," Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on Covid-19 response at the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, said at a press conference on Friday.
"There may be sort of a 'push and pull' for some time as we try to really work and suppress this virus across the globe," she added.
A number of countries are opening up their economies after having shown they are able to suppress the transmission, she said.
"The countries that are further along in this are countries across Asia, and we do see that countries like China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore have lifted some of these public health and social measures in a slow and controlled way," she said.
"We are learning from those countries who are slowly opening up their economies again.
"In Japan and in Singapore, for example, they've seen outbreaks that are taking place in certain situations. Singapore right now is dealing with outbreaks in expat dormitories and dormitories where people live in close proximity to one another," she said, adding that Singapore has presented how it is trying to find all of those cases and suppress transmission in closed settings.
According to Dr Kerkhove, countries are improving their systems to identify infected people through increasing capacity on testing and contact tracing. These countries also made sure of the availability of hospital beds to care for Covid-19 patients. "So what we're seeing is even though they are lifting some of these measures, they are quickly working to find cases, if those cases do resurge, so that they could try to suppress transmission again," she said.
To enable people in under-resourced countries, the WHO plans to launch an app this month that asks them for their symptoms and give information such as how to get tested, said WHO chief information officer Bernardo Mariano.
The WHO also plans to release an app next week to inform health workers on the best practices for donning protective gear, washing hands and treating Covid-19.
In China, a top health official admitted yesterday the pandemic had exposed "shortcomings" in its public healthcare system.
Dr Li Bin, deputy director of China's National Health Commission, said at a press briefing: "The novel coronavirus outbreak was a big test that revealed China still has shortcomings in its major epidemic prevention and control system, public health systems and other aspects of responding (to an emergency)."
China's health authority will build a "centralised, unified and efficient" leadership system that would allow it to respond more quickly and effectively to any public health crisis in the future, Dr Li added.
XINHUA, REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
