The World Health Organization is warning that countries lifting public health restrictions too early could see an 'immediate second peak' in COVID-19 cases, even if new diagnoses are currently declining in their region.
TORONTO -- The World Health Organization is warning that countries lifting public health restrictions too early could see an “immediate second peak” in COVID-19 cases, even if new diagnoses are currently declining in their region.Monday, Dr. Michael Ryan of the WHO said that although cases are on their way down in many countries, the world is still “right in the middle of the first wave, globally.
“But we need to be also cognizant of the fact that the disease can jump up at any time,” he added. “We cannot make assumptions that just because the disease is on the way down now, that it’s going to keep going down and we’re going to get a number of months to get ready for a second wave.He said that a second peak in cases within the first wave of a pandemic is something that has happened before in the past, such as with the influenza pandemic of 1918, sometimes called the Spanish Flu.
Ryan added that the situation is very different depending on where in the world one is, pointing out that countries such as Spain have managed to “contain and suppress the disease transmission,” while in other regions such as South America, Africa, South Asia, and “many other countries, we’re still very much in a phase where the disease is actually on the way up.”
In Canada, some provinces are beginning to reopen in stages after days or weeks of no new cases, or relatively low case numbers, but Ontario and Quebec have come under fire for beginning to reopen retail and workplaces despite daily case numbers still being in the hundreds.
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