WHO: Don’t expect travel bans to beat coronavirus, dispels myth about hot weather beating virus
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Countries may gain time in the short-term as they limit travel to fight the new coronavirus pandemic, but the World Health Organization thinks overall that “it doesn’t help to restrict movement,” a top adviser to the U.N. health agency’s chief said Thursday.
Dr. Bruce Aylward, who led a WHO team in China during the raging COVID-19 outbreak there last month, said in an interview that travel bans “generally aren’t part of the armamentarium you bring to bear on something like this.”
“What we found, as a general principle – not a general principle, a pretty robust principle – is that it doesn’t help to restrict movement,” Aylward, a former WHO emergencies chief, said outside a room at agency headquarters devoted to the outbreak. “What you’re really interested in is: Where is the virus? The viruses in the cases, the viruses in their close contacts.”
Aylward spoke a day after WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the worldwide spread of the virus now qualified as a pandemic and President Donald Trump announced temporary entry bans on travellers from most of Europe. Other countries also stepped up cross-border restrictions.
He acknowledged that “people are confused” about the virus. He advised frequent hand-washing and other sanitary practices to avoid infection and getting tested quickly when someone suspects they’ve been exposed to the virus.
Aylward also sought to dispel some myths and misconceptions about the virus. He said people should not worry about goods shipped from places with significant case numbers and remember that “sniffles” aren’t a symptom of COVID-19 but a high fever and dry cough are.
He alluded to comments by some that warmer weather might snuff out the virus.
“Many people ask, ‘Will this go away with the winter season?’” he said, noting that the epidemiological approach calls for locating and tracking the virus and getting infected people out of circulation.
“I would not be betting on Mother Nature here,” Aylward said. “I would be betting on case-finding. Isolation (of patients). Contact tracing. Testing. Testing. Testing.”
