WHO no longer advocates a shutdown strategy for epidemic prevention

Reporter : Jin Shi / Publisher : NTD / https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2020/10/13/a102962669.html / Translation, editing : Gan Yung Chyan, KUCINTA SETIA

Image : Starlux Airlines operates commercial flights to Macau during the pandemic. Both Macau and Taiwan have no covid cases nowadays and have re-opened their economies.

The World Health Organization has recently urged leaders of all countries not to shut down countries as a major measure of epidemic prevention, and warned that such a shutdown will bring more catastrophic consequences.

The WHO special envoy for covid prevention and control, Dr. David Nabarro, said in a video interview with the British "The Spectator" magazine recently that the country was shut down to buy time and redeploy resources. But in the long run, this is not advocated.

Nabarro said, "We at the WHO do not advocate shutting down countries as the main way to control this virus (SARS-CoV-2)."

Nabarro's special envoy said that such a shutdown would cause huge damage to the global economy and cause more poverty in the world.

Current affairs commentator Xiao En remarked, "This closure has brought about the bankruptcy of many companies and the decline of the retail industry. Many people have lost their jobs. Such a huge state of unemployment will further aggravate people's mental slip to the brink of collapse. It will bring a greater burden to society."

The outside world has noticed that the WHO seems to have reversed the issue of shutting down countries to prevent epidemics. Earlier, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had warned countries not to open up too early in order to avoid a rebound.

Xiao En added, "The WHO can now make such changes. I think to a certain extent, there may be some different voices in the WHO. Because in the past, Tedros and others were too dependent on the so-called resistance of the CCP in their experience during its epidemic but these experiences are obviously not applicable in other countries."

US President Trump tweeted on Tuesday, "WHO no longer likes to shut down, and just came out to oppose it. Trump is right."

President Trump said as early as May this year that even if the United States has a second wave of epidemics, he will not shut down the country again.

At the beginning of the outbreak in the United States, President Trump issued a travel ban on China, the origin of the virus, and established a White House Epidemic Prevention Team to coordinate federal resources to fight the epidemic. According to Dr. Fauci, an important member of the epidemic prevention team and an infectious disease expert, the White House epidemic prevention team had worked day and night, holding numerous meetings and late-night telephone consultations on deployment.

As the epidemic in the US eases, President Trump also said in May that the direction of the White House Epidemic Prevention Team will shift to focus on "restarting the economy."