The World Health Organization’s European director warned national governments Thursday against reducing the quarantine period for people potentially exposed to the coronavirus, even as he acknowledged that COVID-19 “fatigue” was setting in with growing public resistance to the measures needed to control the pandemic.
Dr. Hans Kluge said that “even a slight reduction in the length of the quarantine” could have a significant effect on the spread of the virus which returned to “alarming rates of transmission” in Europe this month. Kluge insisted that countries should only reduce the standard two-week quarantine period if it was scientifically justified. He offered to convene scientific discussions on the issue, if necessary.
WHO Europe’s 53-country region recorded more than 300,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the last week, and more than half of the countries reported a rise of more than 10% in cases over the last two weeks, he said. Of those countries, seven had their cases jump by more than two-fold. Such statistics should be “a wake-up call for all of us,” Kluge said.
Katie Smallwood, WHO Europe’s senior health emergency officer, said its recommendation that people quarantine themselves for 14 days after a possible exposure was based on the agency’s understanding of the disease’s incubation period and transmission patterns. During a press briefing with both substance and symbolism, the two WHO Europe officials both wore masks during a video conference from Copenhagen.
The decision was a marked statement compared to a news conference held an hour earlier at WHO’s world headquarters in Geneva, where neither Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, his emergencies chief, Dr. Michael Ryan, nor any other officials were masked. Switzerland and France, which all but surrounds Geneva, both have reported a surge in confirmed virus cases in recent weeks.
Source: France24
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