Countries With Experience In Infectious Diseases Acted More Swiftly Against COVID-19 - WHO

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th July, 2020) Countries with previous experience with infectious disease outbreaks were the ones who acted most swiftly to contain COVID-19 and have been the most successful in curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus, Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 technical lead at the World Health Organization (WHO), said on Thursday.

Thursday marks six months since the UN health agency declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.

"I think we can characterize the response globally as mixed. I think we can very strongly show that countries that have acted fast, have acted aggressively, have acted comprehensively - it's really due to [the fact that] many countries who have had direct experience with something similar or similar threat, countries that have had experience with SARS ... and countries that have had direct experience with avian influenza, those that have had experience with MERS, those countries across Africa that have had experience with other infectious diseases that they deal with so often really knew the threat of this," Van Kerkhove told a virtual press briefing.

She noted that even countries that have had been hit hard by the pandemic at first have ultimately managed to turn the tide.

"I think what we need to do going forward us look at how we could be more efficient in our response, how can everyone be more efficient in the tools that we apply so that we don't have to go into large lockdown again or so-called lockdown measures, that we can tailor the approach to the geographic area and to the transmission area where it's needed," Van Kerkhove said.

WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March and has been consistently advising countries to adopt aggressive measures, such as strict social distancing, lockdowns and mask-wearing, to curb the virus.