{"id":5817,"date":"2020-04-01T12:10:12","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T16:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/?p=5817"},"modified":"2020-04-01T12:10:12","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T16:10:12","slug":"who-issues-a-rare-public-scolding-saying-countries-wasting-time-should-maintain-lockdowns-despite-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/01\/who-issues-a-rare-public-scolding-saying-countries-wasting-time-should-maintain-lockdowns-despite-cost\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO Issues A Rare Public Scolding, Saying Countries Wasting Time, Should Maintain Lockdowns Despite Cost"},"content":{"rendered":"

(BLOOMBERG) \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0Governments should stop wasting precious time needed to fight the coronavirus after squandering an opportunity to prevent the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization\u2019s head said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe squandered the first window of opportunity,\u201d said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. \u201cThe time to act was actually more than a month ago or two months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

The WHO chief gave a rare, blunt admonishment yesterday on the world\u2019s progress against the disease, which has killed almost 20,000 people and is present in almost every country. The agency generally avoids public criticism of its member states, Mike Ryan, the head of its emergencies program, has said.<\/p>\n

The world has a second chance, as 150 countries have fewer than 100 reported cases and still have time to prepare, Tedros said. Those that have ordered lockdowns have won themselves time to implement aggressive measures to stamp out the disease. How long lockdowns must last depends on what actions countries take during them to ensure the disease is eradicated, Tedros said.<\/p>\n

While such strict regimes impose harsh social and economic costs, \u201cthe last thing any country needs is to reopen schools and businesses only to close them again because of a resurgence in cases,\u201d Tedros said.<\/p>\n

He gave a list of six actions every country should take:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Expand, train and deploy health-care workers
\n\u2022 Implement systems to find suspected cases
\n\u2022 Ramp up production of tests and increase availability
\n\u2022 Identify facilities that can be transformed into coronavirus health centers
\n\u2022 Develop plans to quarantine cases
\n\u2022 Refocus government on suppressing the virus<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world is not ready for a pandemic,\u201d Ryan said. For example, breaks in the supply chain could threaten supplies of medical gloves, which are made from rubber that\u2019s sourced from only a few countries.<\/p>\n

Health-care workers are facing shortages of protective gear across the world, said Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO. People who aren\u2019t sick don\u2019t need masks, she has said, and doctors shouldn\u2019t be deprived of them because of the way a country uses them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not acceptable,\u201d she said. \u201cProtecting our health-care workers must be the top priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s any lesson from this pandemic, it\u2019s that we need stronger public health systems,\u201d on a national and global level, Ryan said.<\/p>\n

Dutch scientists were able to find the coronavirus in a city\u2019s wastewater before Covid-19 cases were reported, demonstrating a novel early warning system for the pneumonia-causing disease.<\/p>\n

The so-called SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is often excreted in an infected person\u2019s stool. Although it\u2019s unlikely that sewage will become an important route of transmission, the pathogen\u2019s increasing circulation in communities will increase the amount of it flowing into sewer systems, Gertjan Medema and colleagues at the KWR Water Research Institute in Nieuwegein said on Monday.<\/p>\n

They detected genetic material from the coronavirus at a wastewater treatment plant in Amersfoort on March 5, before any cases had been reported in the city, located about 50 kilometers (32 miles) southeast of Amsterdam. The Netherlands confirmed its first Covid-19 case on Feb. 27 and discovered health workers had fallen ill with the infection in a southern part of the country days later \u2014 a sign that it was spreading in the community.<\/p>\n

Coronavirus Lurking in Feces May Reveal Hidden Risk of Spread<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important to collect information about the occurrence and fate of this new virus in sewage to understand if there is no risk to sewage workers, but also to determine if sewage surveillance could be used to monitor the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in our communities,\u201d Medema, the institute\u2019s principal microbiologist, and co-authors said in a paper released ahead of peer review. \u201cThat could complement current clinical surveillance, which is limited to the Covid-19 patients with the most severe symptoms.\u201dIt\u2019s the first report of detection of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage, they said.<\/p>\n

Wastewater surveillance is a well established method of detecting poliovirus and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, as well as the use of illicit and prescription medications.<\/p>\n

Sewage surveillance could also serve as early warning of the emergence and re-emergence of Covid-19 in cities, the Dutch scientists said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe detection of the virus in sewage, even when the Covid-19 prevalence is low, indicates that sewage surveillance could be a sensitive tool to monitor the circulation of the virus in the population,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(BLOOMBERG) \u2013\u00a0Governments should stop wasting precious time needed to fight the coronavirus after squandering an opportunity to prevent the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization\u2019s head said. \u201cWe squandered the first window of opportunity,\u201d said […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C671&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C671&ssl=1",1024,671,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg",1024,671,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg",1024,671,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?fit=300%2C197&ssl=1",300,197,true],"large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C671&ssl=1",1024,671,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C671&ssl=1",1024,671,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C671&ssl=1",1024,671,true],"mh-magazine-slider":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C438&ssl=1",1024,438,true],"mh-magazine-content":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?resize=678%2C381&ssl=1",678,381,true],"mh-magazine-large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?resize=678%2C509&ssl=1",678,509,true],"mh-magazine-medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?resize=326%2C245&ssl=1",326,245,true],"mh-magazine-small":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/drealfmgrenada.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/who-1-1024x671-1.jpg?resize=80%2C60&ssl=1",80,60,true]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"adminrfm","author_link":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/author\/adminrfm\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Health<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"(BLOOMBERG) \u2013\u00a0Governments should stop wasting precious time needed to fight the coronavirus after squandering an opportunity to prevent the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization\u2019s head said. \u201cWe squandered the first window of opportunity,\u201d said [...]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5819,"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5817\/revisions\/5819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drealfmgrenada.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}