Countries can\u2019t simply lock down their societies to defeat coronavirus, the World Health Organization\u2019s top emergency expert said on Sunday, adding that public health measures are needed to avoid a resurgence of the virus later on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat we really need to focus on is finding those who are sick, those who have the virus, and isolate them, find their contacts and isolate them,\u201d Mike Ryan said in an interview on the BBC\u2019s Andrew Marr Show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe danger right now with the lock downs if we don\u2019t put in place the strong public health measures now, when those movement restrictions and lockdowns are lifted, the danger is the disease will jump back up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Much of Europe and the United States have followed China and other Asian countries and introduced drastic restrictions to fight the new coronavirus, with most workers told to work from home and schools, bars, pubs and restaurants being closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ryan said that the examples of China, Singapore and South Korea, which coupled restrictions with rigorous measures to test every possible suspect, provided a model for Europe, which the WHO has said has replaced Asia as the epicentre of the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOnce we\u2019ve suppressed the transmission, we have to go after the virus. We have to take the fight to the virus,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Italy is now the worst hit country in the world by the virus, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has warned that Britain\u2019s health system could be overwhelmed unless people avoid social interactions. British housing minister Robert Jenrick said that production of tests would double next week and ramp up thereafter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ryan also said that several vaccines were in development, but only one had begun trials in the United States. Asked how long it would take before there was a vaccine available in Britain, he said that people needed to be realistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have to make sure that it\u2019s absolutely safe\u2026 we are talking at least a year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Reuters)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Countries can\u2019t simply lock down their societies to defeat coronavirus, the World Health Organization\u2019s top emergency expert said on Sunday, adding that public health measures are needed to avoid a resurgence of the virus later on. \u201cWhat we really need to focus on is finding those who are sick, those who have the virus, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}