Country is still at risk, says WHO expert

Country is still at risk, says WHO expert

07/06/2020

He stressed that as the disease generated and gained a foothold in communities, it could accelerate at any time as had been seen in a number of settings.

Mr. Ryan noted that measures taken in India, like the nationwide lockdown, had helped to slow transmission, but the risk of an increase in cases loomed as the country opened up. “The measures taken in India certainly had an impact in dampening transmission and as India, as in other large countries, opens up and as people begin to move again, there’s always a risk of the disease bouncing back up.”

He added that there were specific issues in India regarding the large amount of migration, the dense populations in the urban environment and the fact that many workers had no choice but to go to work every day.

WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said the over 2,00,000 current novel coronavirus cases in India, a country of over 1.3 billion people, “look big but for a country of this size, it’s still modest.” She stressed that it was important for India to keep track of the growth rate and the doubling time of the cases and make sure that the number did not get worse.

She said India is a heterogeneous and huge country with very densely populated cities and a much lower density in some rural areas and varying health systems in different States, and these factors posed challenges to the control of COVID-19.

Ms. Swaminathan added that as the lockdown and restrictions were lifted, it must be ensured that people took all precautions. “We’ve been making this point repeatedly that really if you want behaviour change at a large level, people need to understand the rationale for asking them to do certain things [such as] wearing masks,” she said.