United Nations News –

Governments everywhere should adopt a much more focused approach to stopping coronavirus transmission if they want to avoid having to impose sweeping lockdowns once again.

That’s the message on Monday from the World Health Organization, (WHO), whose head of emergencies, Dr Mike Ryan, likened fighting COVID-19 to using specialised tools for surgery, to ensure better outcomes for patients.

16 million cases of coronavirus

The development comes as the WHO announced nearly 16 million cases of reported infection worldwide and more than 640,000 deaths.

“It’s very understandable that no country in the world that’s been through a lockdown wants to go back there, who wants to go back there, there are huge economic and other consequences,” Dr Ryan said.

“If you can understand the dynamics of transmission and be very precise in your disease understanding you can very precise in your response. It’s like in surgery, if you think about people who have brain surgery, surgeons very often use microscopes so that they can actually work at a much finer level.

“And we’ve seen huge increases in the numbers of people surviving from brain surgery because we are much precise in the surgery we can carry out.”

Six months with new coronavirus

Reiterating the need for continued vigilance against the disease and the need for authorities to ramp up tracking and tracing of contacts, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that Thursday (30 July) marks six months since the UN agency declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern.

This was the sixth time a global health emergency has been declared under the International Health Regulations, “but it is easily the most severe”, he said, during a virtual press conference at WHO headquarters in Geneva.

The pandemic continues to accelerate, Tedros continued, noting that in the past six weeks, the total number of cases had roughly doubled.

Citing Cambodia, New Zealand, Rwanda, Thailand, Viet Nam, and islands in the Pacific and Caribbean, as places that had prevented large-scale outbreaks by respecting transmission reduction measures “carefully and consistently”, Tedros also praised Canada, China, Germany and the Republic of Korea for bringing large outbreaks under control.

Safe choices

Remaining determined to stop the virus in its tracks is key to ending transmission, along with a willingness to make “hard choices to keep ourselves and each other safe”, he said.

“Although our world has changed, the fundamental pillars of the response have not: political leadership, and informing, engaging and listening to communities,” he added.

“Nor have the basic measures needed to suppress transmission and save lives: find, isolate, test and care for cases; and trace and quarantine their contacts.”

Reiterating advice born of evidence that no single health measure is sufficient to overcome COVID-19, he called on people to “keep your distance from others, clean your hands, avoid crowded and enclosed areas, and wear a mask where recommended. Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they’re not, cases go up.”

Under pressure

Echoing that message, WHO’s Dr Maria Van Kerkhove insisted that in addition to wearing masks every day, the world’s “new normal” meant knowing where the virus is “each and every day, where we live, we work, where we want to travel. That’s going to be part of how we move forward with this, finding the balance between keeping the virus transmission low and resuming normal activities.”

Dr Van Kerkhove, Technical lead COVID-19, WHO Health Emergencies Programme, also highlighted the mental health impact of such measures on individuals, families and communities.

“This is very difficult, no matter where we are,” she said, noting that the WHO had issued advice on its website aimed at helping people to cope if they felt under pressure. “Everyone is going through this and I think it’s important that we find different ways to talk about this with each other, whether this within our family, with our loved ones, whether it’s older individuals who are kept isolated, kept separate from the family, whether it’s our kids.”

In other news:

COVID-19: No return to “old normal”

The post WHO: “We must all accept hard choices if we’re to beat COVID-19” appeared first on Caribbean News Now!.

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Jamaica has earned an estimated US$80 million from around 40,000 tourists who came to the island since the country re-opened its borders on 15 June.

During the Rediscover Jamaica campaign launch last July 22, Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett credited the earnings to the measures which the Government implemented for building confidence for tourists.

Barlett said that many of the measures are the first among tourist destinations of the world and that protocols have enabled the Government of Jamaica to manage the movement of the tourists.

“The reopening of the industry along the northern coast corridor has allowed thousands of workers to return to their jobs, while the reopening of the southern coast corridor last week ensured that another 10,000 Jamaicans would start working again.”

The Minister added that the Caribbean is a tourism-dependent region, and in Jamaica, the Government knows that tourism is integral for the survival of the country.

“As the most significant economic engine of the country, travel and tourist industry of Jamaica employs 170,000 workers and effects an additional 120,000 from other related industries, and it fuels more than one-third of the economy of Jamaica.”

He went on to say that the past few months were particularly challenging because of the global COVID-19 pandemic. As a country, Jamaica suffered the most significant economic decline, which it witnessed in the past four decades.

Jamaica’s GDP declined by 1.7 per cent for the month of March this year and the real GDP is projected to fall 12-14 per cent for this year’s April-June quarter.

Bartlett note that until there is mass access to a COVID-19 vaccine, the risk can not be eliminated.

He likewise said the protocols were benchmarked against 20 other markets around the world, and reviewed by global health agencies, with the phased opening of the sector as a result of consultations with the ministries of health and wellness; national security; and foreign affairs and foreign trade.

“We are all seeing and feeling the societal shift in mindset, including how we travel. There is a sense of anticipation, of wanting to reconnect with nature and with people. For this to happen there must be an imperative that we work together across sectors to develop a framework that prioritises the health of our citizens, along with traveller confidence and safety.”

In other news:

CARICOM IMPACS to host first-ever Virtual Security Conference in the region.

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