Covid-19: WHO deplores overly abrupt lifting of restrictions in several European countries

WHO Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland © Xinhua News Agency.All Rights Re

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1 min

Pandemic figures are on the rise again in Europe.

Twenty countries, including France, are particularly concerned.

A situation that is not surprising: the WHO has been asking governments for weeks not to lift all anti-Covid measures.

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With our correspondent in Geneva,

Jérémie Lanche

Just because someone decides to take off their mask doesn't mean their neighbor absolutely has to do the same.

It's basically the little music that the WHO has been trying to make heard since the beginning of the year.

Except that few countries really listen to it.

The result is these five million new cases of Covid-19 in one week in Europe for more than 12,000 deaths.

“ 

Several factors explain this increase in contamination.

There is the fact that the BA.2 variant is more transmissible.

And there is also the fact that all these countries are lifting the restrictions abruptly.

Going from too much to not enough,

explains Hans Kluge, the director of the European branch of the WHO.

I believe that we must make a difference between the Covid and the pandemic.

We're going to have to live with Covid for a long time, but that doesn't mean we can't get rid of the pandemic 

."

All is not black, however.

Already because Europeans have acquired broad immunity against Covid-19 with Omicron.

And also because with the end of winter, the risk of ending up in confined spaces decreases.

But that would be to forget that the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron which is currently spreading is the most transmissible ever seen since the start of the pandemic.

And that all countries are not as vaccinated as Western Europe.

►Also read: Covid-19: several European countries lift most of their health restrictions

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  • Health and medicine

  • Coronavirus

  • WHO