United States rule out lockdown; WHO warns of new outbreaks
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned today (29) that the Ômicron variant of the new coronavirus poses a high risk of new outbreaks of infection.
WHO warned the 194 member nations that the possibility of a new outbreak could have severe consequences, but noted that no deaths have been reported so far as a result of the new strain.
Also today, US President Joe Biden said in a speech at the White House that the new variant is cause for concern, but not panic. According to Biden, the variant will arrive on American soil sooner or later; therefore, the best approach at the moment is vaccination.
Next Thursday (2), the White House, the seat of the United States government, will release a new strategy to deal with the pandemic and its variants during the winter. Joe Biden said that the plan will not include new actions restricting the movement of people or containing agglomerations. “If people are vaccinated and wear masks, there is no need for a new lockdown [confinement],” he said.
The president stressed, however, that it will still take a few weeks to prove the effectiveness of the available immunizers against Ômicron.
Health expert Anthony Fauci, the government's adviser on action against the pandemic, said the country "is obviously on red alert." "It is inevitable that it will spread widely," he said in an interview with a television network this Saturday (27), according to the international news agency Reuters.
According to projections from international health agencies, the number of cases of the Ômicron variant is expected to exceed 10,000 this week, compared to 300 records made last week, informed Professor Salim Abdool Karim, an infectious disease specialist who works to combat the pandemic in the southern government. African.
Yesterday (28), the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, denounced on social networks what he called an “unjustified and unscientific” approach towards the country. For Ramaphosa, the closing of borders and the ban on flights from countries in southern Africa deeply hurts economies that depend on tourism, in addition to being “a kind of punishment for the scientific capacity to detect new variants”.
The president of South Africa called for international authorities not to establish restrictions on flights to the region.
*With information from Reuters
Text translated using artificial intelligence.
