Coronavirus: WHO urges ‘extreme caution’ in lifting restrictions
- Global Covid-19 death toll passes 4 million
- England to lift virus restrictions from July 19
The emergencies chief for the World Health Organization is calling on governments to exercise “extreme caution” in fully lifting restrictions aimed to curtail the spread of Covid-19, warning that transmission will increase as countries open up.
Dr Michael Ryan, asked during a WHO news conference to respond to Britain’s decision this week to ease restrictions despite rising case counts, says “every country right now is lifting restrictions in one way or the other” in hopes of striking a balance between a return toward normality and the need to control the virus as vaccinations increase.
“Transmission will increase when you open up,” says Ryan, because not everyone is vaccinated and uncertainty remains about how much vaccination curbs transmission.
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“The virus is showing us right now that it’s thriving,” she says. “This is not theoretical.”
The tally of lives lost over the past year and a half, as compiled from official sources by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the number of people killed in battle in all of the world’s wars since 1982, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.
The toll is three times the number of people killed in traffic accidents around the globe every year. It is about equal to the population of Los Angeles or the nation of Georgia. It is equivalent to more than half of Hong Kong or close to 50 per cent of New York City.
Even then, it is widely believed to be an undercount because of overlooked cases or deliberate concealment.
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With the advent of the vaccine, deaths per day have plummeted to around 7,900, after topping out at over 18,000 a day in January.
But in recent weeks, the mutant Delta version of the virus first identified in India has set off alarms around the world, spreading rapidly even in vaccination success stories like the US, Britain and Israel.
Britain, in fact, recorded a one-day total this week of more than 30,000 new infections for the first time since January, even as the government prepares to lift all remaining lockdown restrictions in England later this month.
According to research led by Imperial College London, Covid-19 infections in England have quadrupled in a month since early June
The study, one of Britain’s largest with 47,000 people returning tests from June 24 to July 5, found national prevalence was 0.59 per cent, or 1 in 170 people, compared with 0.15 per cent in the last round between late May and early June.
“It’s very difficult to make an argument, based on the type of data that we get, that it’s a good thing to open early,” Steven Riley, Professor of Infectious Disease Dynamics at Imperial College London, said.
The US has the world’s highest reported death toll, at over 600,000, or nearly 1 in 7 deaths, followed by Brazil at more than 520,000, though the real numbers are believed to be much higher in Brazil, where President Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government has long played down the virus.
Associated Press and Reuters
