THE WORLD Health Organization on Sunday known as upon international locations in WHO South-East Asia Region to scale up and rigorously implement public well being and social measures, together with efforts to speed up vaccination for Covid-19 to stop one other surge as extra international locations confirmed prevalence of extremely transmissible variants of issues.
“We need to continuously strengthen our efforts to test, trace and isolate. Societal interventions such as physical distancing, hand hygiene and proper wearing of masks need to be stringently implemented. These measures should be in full force and for longer periods in areas reporting more transmissible variants of concerns,” mentioned Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director, WHO South-East Asia.
Public well being and social measures are a variety of non-pharmaceutical interventions, each particular person and societal, and are cost-effective measures to cut back the unfold of SARS-CoV-2, and save lives.
In addition to private protecting measures, they embody: Cleaning, disinfection, air flow, surveillance, contact tracing, isolation and quarantine, bodily distancing measures resembling limiting the scale of gatherings, sustaining distance in public or workplaces, home motion restrictions and worldwide travel-related measures.
“These measures are critical for preventing infections, reducing transmission and saving lives,” mentioned Dr Khetrapal Singh.
She mentioned whilst international locations scaled up vaccination in opposition to Covid-19, they wanted to implement public well being and social measures in tailor-made and agile method.
She additional mentioned a risk-based method was wanted for public well being and social measures, which needs to be carried out on the lowest administrative degree and constantly adjusted to the depth of transmission and the capability of well being programs.
The capability of the well being programs included each scientific look after Covid-19 and non-Covid, and public well being providers resembling case detection, diagnostic testing, contact tracing, Dr Khetrapal Singh mentioned. The danger evaluation ought to measure each precise potential to ship providers, and the efficiency of these providers, she added.
“Where more transmissible variants of concern are spreading, these measures need to be applied more stringently and for longer periods,” mentioned the regional director.
Earlier this week, Maldives and Myanmar confirmed transmission of variants of concern. Earlier, variants of concern have been confirmed in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste.
The variants of concern, together with opening of economies and societies, contributed to the current surge in circumstances globally.
Countries the world over are at present at totally different phases within the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic and face various epidemiological conditions. Though the area is now witnessing an general decline in circumstances, primarily because of lowering circumstances reported in India, in another international locations circumstances are nonetheless growing.
“We must not forget that the pandemic is still around. We must guard against complacency, at any level. We must continue to implement combinations of public health and social measures until globally there is high Covid-19 vaccine coverage among health workers, and high-risk and vulnerable groups,” she mentioned.
