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According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) situation report, globally the milestone of 10 million COVID-19 cases and nearly half a million deaths from the disease, has been reached.
Prof Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, University of Edinburgh, said:
“Sadly, it is no surprise that the world has now reached the milestone of ten million confirmed cases of COVID-19 (and this is surely an underestimate of the true number of cases) and is fast approaching a toll of half a million deaths. Even in the early stages of this pandemic, the World Health Organisation’s strategy of global eradication never looked likely to succeed, and it has failed comprehensively. We now have to adapt to a world in which we are living with COVID-19 for the foreseeable future. With that realisation, we may now want to re-think our strategy for combatting COVID-19. Throughout the pandemic, WHO has placed extreme social distancing measures – lockdown – at the core of their recommendations for tackling COVID-19. Lockdown may have had a role in an attempt at eradication (or, locally, elimination), but it could never be sustainable. Lockdown is hugely damaging to economies, health care provision, mental health and education. The world needs alternatives to lockdown, and quickly, if we are to avoid turning a global health emergency into an even bigger catastrophe.
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