Easing coronavirus restrictions and attempting to prematurely reopen the economy could lead to a 'vicious cycle' of economic and health disaster, the World Health Organization warned Wednesday.
Easing coronavirus restrictions and attempting to prematurely reopen the economy could lead to a "vicious cycle" of economic and health disaster, the World Health Organization warned Wednesday.
"This is what we all fear, is a vicious cycle of public health disaster followed by economic disaster followed by public health disaster followed by economic disaster," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's emergencies program, said at a press conference at the organization's Geneva headquarters Wednesday. "If you reopen in the presence of a high degree of virus transmission, then that transmission may accelerate.
"If that virus transmission accelerates and you don't have the systems to detect it, it will be days or weeks before you know something has gone wrong," he said. "That has more danger for the economic system than it actually has on the health system in a sense." To avoid rolling out restrictions after they've been lifted, countries and regions that reopen need to have infrastructure in place to conduct widespread testing to quickly detect and isolate potential cases before they have a chance to spread, Ryan said. Without the capacity to test broadly, it will take weeks for officials to detect a new outbreak — giving it weeks to circulate unchecked, he said.
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