WHO special envoy denounces containment as main measure in the fight against COVID-19

The British envoy to the WHO, Dr David Nabarro, denounced the recurrent confinement as the main measure to fight against the rise of COVID-19 infections, adding that this could lead to widespread impoverishment across the world.

“We at the World Health Organization (WHO) do not advocate containment as the main way to control this virus,” he said on Saturday in an interview with journalist Andrew Neil, of the English magazine. The Spectator.

“The only times we believe that containment is warranted is in order to buy time for reorganization, consolidation and recalibration of resources [et] helping health workers who are exhausted, but in general we prefer not to, ”said D^r Nabarro.

The director general in charge of the WHO program for the management of health emergencies, Mike Ryan, had said much the same thing during a press conference given the day before, Friday, at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

“What we want to avoid – and, sometimes, it is inevitable and we accept it – but what we want to avoid, it is these great confinements which are so painful for the communities, the companies and for everything”, had he then declared.

During his interview with The Spectator, the D^r Nabarro pointed to the impacts of health measures on the tourism industry and said mass lockdowns could “double” levels of poverty and food insufficiency among children across the world as early as next year.

“It’s a terrible, terrible disaster, actually. So, we call on the leaders of the world to stop using containment as the primary method of control. Develop better systems to do this, ”he added.

Containment, according to the WHO, has been presented since the start of the pandemic as a tool to fight the virus, but the latter is part of a wider range of strategies, including the six lines of action suggested by the organization in March.

In May, the D^re Maria Van Kerkhove, technical manager of the unit in charge of pandemic management at WHO, had invited governments around the world not to think of containment as a “magic recipe”, stressing that it had to be done. more precise and strategic use, without imposing it on a large scale, but locally.

In interview with Radio-Canada published on 1^er October, the D^r David Nabarro said he was “particularly impressed by the work of the Canadian government and especially that of the Minister of Health”, stressing that the country was taking the “right measures” to deal with the virus.