News Desk :
As some countries experience declines in COVID-19 cases and deaths, their leaders and citizens are eager to get back to work, school, and play.
But restrictions need to be lifted slowly and strategically in order to successfully re-enter a new normal rather than lead to waves of lockdowns in the future, the World Health Organization’s leaders said during a World Health Organization online briefing May 7,
“While COVID-19 accelerates very fast, it decelerates much more slowly,” the WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “In other words, the way down is much slower than the way app. That means control measures must be lifted slowly and with control. It cannot happen all at once.”
Tedros laid out six criteria that will help countries “chart the way forward” as they consider lifting restrictions:
1.Transmission of the virus must be limited to “sporadic cases and clusters of cases, all from known contacts or
importations.” 2.Health authorities must detect and handle new cases coming in from travelers.
3.Health experts should be able to detect and test all suspected cases, and all confirmed cases need to be effectively isolated. Plus, all close contacts must be traced and quarantined for 14 days.
4.Places with vulnerable populations, like nursing homes, must have their risk of infection minimized.
5.Workplaces must put preventive measures in place, allowing for physical distancing and hand-washing.
6.Communities need to understand that “behavioral prevention measures must be maintained” and remain committed to stopping the transmission of disease.
“Every country should be implementing a comprehensive set of measures to slow down transmission and save lives with the aim of reaching a steady state of low level or no transmission,” Tedros said. “Countries must balance between measures that address the mortality caused by COVID-19 and from other diseases due to other health systems as well as the social economic impacts.”
