Agencies

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned governments around the world against easing Covid-19 restrictions too soon, saying countries that did so risked paying a heavy price for rushing back to normality.

Speaking at a press briefing on Monday, the UN health agency’s top emergency expert Mike Ryan said a new wave of infections could be round the corner and noted that for much of the world, the pandemic was just getting started.

“All of the countries of the Americas, we still have nearly one million cases a week,” he said. “And the same in Europe…with half a million cases a week. It’s not like this thing has gone away,” Ryan added. “It isn’t over.”

Last week, the WHO’s Africa director had warned that “the speed and scale” of the continent’s third wave “is like nothing we’ve seen before”.

In Russia, meanwhile, coronavirus deaths hit another daily record yesterday, with authorities reporting 737 more fatalities. The daily tally of confirmed infections has more than doubled in the past month, soaring from about 9,000 in early June to more than 23,000 this week.

The warnings come amid renewed concerns over the new coronavirus Delta variant, first detected in India in April. The new strain, which is considered to be the most transmissible variant yet, has now spread to nearly 100 countries worldwide.

Experts say more than 80 percent of a country’s population would need to be inoculated in order to contain it – a challenging target even for nations with advanced vaccination programmes. The variant is now responsible for more than 90 percent of all new infections in the United Kingdom and about 30 percent in the United States.

On the same day the WHO issued its warning, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that most Covid-19 restrictions in the country will be lifted in two weeks.

The prime minister acknowledged there will be more infections, but people need to learn to live with the virus.

However, the British Medical Association (BMA) has expressed concerns about removing all coronavirus-related curbs on July 19 given the surge in the Delta variant and a 74 percent increase in infections in the last week alone.

Experts in Israel, which led the way in mass vaccination against the coronavirus, expressed concern Monday that rising cases there suggested the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine might be less effective in preventing mild illness.

The Israeli health ministry said Monday that their analysis suggested the vaccine’s efficacy had dropped to 64 percent during the time the Delta variant had spread across the country. But it was still 93 percent effective in reducing serious Covid illness and hospitalisations, it added.

Germany, meanwhile, has begun easing restrictions, including softer quarantine rules, on travellers from India, Nepal, Portugal, Russia and the UK after the country’s public health institute declared these five nations are no longer areas of “variant of concern”.

Yesterday, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Germany should lift all remaining coronavirus-linked social and economic curbs as soon as everyone has been offered a vaccine.

About 56.5 percent of people in Germany have received at least one dose and almost 39 percent are fully vaccinated, according to health ministry data.