{"id":13691,"date":"2021-07-08T14:00:12","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T14:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/?p=13691"},"modified":"2021-07-08T13:49:23","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T13:49:23","slug":"who-urges-extreme-caution-in-lifting-covid-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/who-urges-extreme-caution-in-lifting-covid-restrictions","title":{"rendered":"WHO urges &#8216;extreme caution&#8217; in lifting Covid restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\">Uganda<\/a>. <\/strong><\/span>The World Health Organization on Wednesday urged &#8220;extreme caution&#8221; for countries considering lifting Covid-19 restrictions, warning that high vaccination rates would not stop transmission of the virus increasing.<\/p>\n<p>The UN health agency urged governments not to squander hard-won gains and return to scenes of overwhelmed hospitals and exhausted health workers.<\/p>\n<p>Asked about England&#8217;s plans to ditch most of its coronavirus restrictions from July 19, WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said: &#8220;I would urge extreme caution in the complete lifting of public health and social measures at this time, because there are consequences for that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>WHO figures show that globally, after a decline in newly reported cases for seven consecutive weeks, there was a slight increase in new cases in the past two weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Cases jumped 30 percent in the WHO&#8217;s European region over the past week.<\/p>\n<p>European countries have administered 70 vaccine doses per 100 inhabitants, according to AFP figures.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Making assumptions that transmission will not increase because we&#8217;re opening up, because of vaccine, is a false assumption,&#8221; said Ryan.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Transmission will increase when you open up, because we don&#8217;t have vaccines in everybody&#8230; and we&#8217;re still not sure to what extent vaccination protects against the ability to be infected or have onward transmission.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With increased transmission in the community, we then put our most vulnerable at risk again.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><b>&#8216;Open up very carefully&#8217;<\/b><\/p>\n<p>British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday revealed plans to lift most of England&#8217;s legal coronavirus restrictions, including face masks and social distancing, urging personal responsibility rather than government edict.<\/p>\n<p>Ryan stressed he did not want to comment on specific countries, but said: &#8220;The idea that everyone is protected&#8230; and everything goes back to normal, I think right now is a very dangerous assumption anywhere in the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And that included Europe, where &#8220;we&#8217;ve seen wave after wave of cases,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We would ask governments to be really careful at this moment not to lose the gains we&#8217;ve made. To open up very carefully.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I would hope that in the European environment we won&#8217;t see a return to the overwhelmed hospitals and the exhausted health workers. But that&#8217;s not a given.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ryan said countries lifting restrictions needed to follow the data and give themselves the option of rowing back if it resulted in negative consequences.<\/p>\n<p>Opening up with low vaccine coverage and variants circulating &#8220;is a real toxic mixture for your hospitals filling up again, and this is something that must absolutely be avoided&#8221;, he added.<\/p>\n<p>Ryan flatly rejected the notion that it would be better to lift restrictions and risk triggering a fresh wave of infections in the summer than doing so in the winter months.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The logic of more people being infected is better, is, I think, logic that has proven its moral emptiness and its epidemiologic stupidity,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Uganda. The World Health Organization on Wednesday urged &#8220;extreme caution&#8221; for countries considering lifting Covid-19 restrictions, warning that high vaccination rates would not stop transmission of the virus increasing. The UN health agency urged governments not to squander hard-won gains and return to scenes of overwhelmed hospitals and exhausted health workers. Asked about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":13690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,12],"tags":[233,240,234],"class_list":["post-13691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-homepage-english","category-policy","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-uganda","tag-uganda"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>WHO urges &#039;extreme caution&#039; in lifting Covid restrictions - Uganda<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The World Health Organization on Wednesday urged &quot;extreme caution&quot; for countries considering lifting Covid-19 restrictio ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/who-urges-extreme-caution-in-lifting-covid-restrictions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"WHO urges &#039;extreme caution&#039; 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