WHO expert says lockdowns alone are not enough for COVID-19

March 16, 2020
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WHO expert says lockdowns alone are not enough for COVID-19

Governments around the world have locked down entire cities and countries in a bid to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, but an expert from the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that this method alone is not enough. Public health measures need to go hand-in-hand alongside quarantines, according to Michael Ryan, the executive director of WHO’s health emergencies programme.

"What 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," said Ryan in an interview on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

"The danger right now with the lockdowns ... if we don't 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," the doctor emphasised.

Ryan cited China, Singapore and South Korea as good examples and said that these countries have provided a model for Europe and the rest of the world to follow. The three countries mentioned paired strict quarantine measures with intensive contact tracing and mass testing every possible suspect.

Many countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas have implemented measures similar to China’s draconian lockdown of the entire Hubei province where the virus was first detected. News agency Agence France-Presse estimates that a billion people in 35 countries are in lockdown as of today, 23 March.

"Once we've suppressed the transmission, we have to go after the virus. We have to take the fight to the virus," Ryan said.

The WHO official said that there are already several vaccines in development, although only one has started trials in the United States. He said that it will take “at least a year” before the vaccines are made available to the public, as it has to undergo a series of tests to ensure its safety.

Ryan cautioned, however, that we all have to act now. “The vaccines will come, but we need to get out and do what we need to do now,” he said.