She added: "When you put a mask on your face you need to have clean hands. It needs to cover your nose and your mouth. Wearing a mask below your nose, wearing a mask off your ear, wearing a mask below your chin is useless - it gives you a false sense of security that you have something on and it is protecting you but It will not."
Individual actions are not enough to control the pandemic. That is why Dr Maria Van Kerkhove underlined --we also need to make sure that there are national policies that support you in doing this: staying home if you are unwell, making sure that there are good testing facilities that are out there, and that people have access to reliable tests so that they know if they are infected and if they are infected to get into the clinical care pathway early because early clinical care saves lives."
"We are asking governments to have rational, evidence-based, tailored, comprehensive policies with a layered approach of all of these different types of interventions that keep people safe. Just please be purposeful in what you are doing", she said.
But some state governments in India have imposed night curfew, even though the WHO Chief Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan has said (as reported in the news) that "there is no science behind night curfews when it comes to tackling the spread of COVID-19 variants." After all, major infection transmission is likely to happen during the social mixing and crowded places during the day. Merely imposing night curfew is not going to yield the desired public health outcomes. Dr Swaminathan added: "Politicians and policymakers need to start balancing the scientific and evidence-based methods we have to control COVID-19 transmission, to reduce its impact on people - particularly reducing deaths and hospitalisations, while at the same time, keeping economies open, making sure livelihoods are not impacted, because people have suffered enough."
Omicron should not be categorised as mild
After undergoing 45 mutations, the corona virus has mutated into a smarter and more infectious variant- the Omicron. These mutations have made it easier for Omicron to infect human cells, have an immune escape so that fully vaccinated people, or those who have had COVID-19, are at risk of being (re)infected, and develop the ability to multiply in the cells of upper respiratory tract (instead of lower respiratory tract or lungs, as is the case with the previous variants).
"While Omicron does appear to be less severe compared to Delta, especially in those vaccinated, it does not mean it should be categorised as mild. Just like the previous variants, Omicron is hospitalising people and is killing people. In fact, the tsunami of cases is so huge and quick that it is overwhelming health systems around the world", rightly said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General.
Agrees Dr Maria van Kerkhove: "Hospitals are becoming overcrowded and understaffed, which further results in preventable deaths from not only COVID-19 but also from other diseases and injuries where patients cannot receive timely care."
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