Vienna - The World Health Organization wants to work with
governments to gradually resume normal passenger travel, WHO chief
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday, while stressing that the
global coronavirus crisis is not over.
Tedros followed the advice of the WHO's coronavirus advisory
committee of international medical experts, who held talks this week,
three months after the UN health agency had declared a top-level
global crisis.
"Of course, the pandemic remains a public health emergency of
international concern," Tedros said in Geneva in an online press
briefing.
While infection numbers are stable or decreasing in European and
Middle Eastern countries, the coronavirus disease Covid-19 is still
on the increase across the Americas.
The WHO has also grown increasingly worried about rising case numbers
in fragile or conflict-ridden countries in recent weeks, the agency's
chief emergency officer Mike Ryan said, naming Haiti, Somalia, Sudan,
South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Central African
Republic and northern Nigeria.
The advisory committee, which was convened under WHO rules for
managing major outbreaks, asked the WHO to develop travel strategies,
and to analyze safety measures such as health screening, isolation
and quarantines.
"This is a difficult issue because it is a question of confidence
between [WHO] member states, it is a question of safe
travel," acknowledged Didier Houssin, a French health policy expert
who heads the advisory body.
"But it is also a very important aspect for the activities in many
countries which are relying very much on air travel," he added.
As countries have imposed travel restrictions and passenger demand
has plummeted, many airlines have grounded aircraft.
This has resulted in a shortage of transport capacity for cargo,
including for essential supplies for tackling the Covid-19 crisis.
The advisory committee urged countries to "avoid restrictions on
international transport of food, medical and other essential
supplies."
The disruption of air traffic has created a massive backlog of
vaccine shipments that could result in outbreaks of preventable
diseases, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned in a separate
briefing.
For the past two weeks, the UN agency has seen planned shipments drop
by between 70 and 80 per cent.
In addition, freight rates have jumped 100 to 200 per cent.
More than two dozen countries in Africa and Asia are at an especially
high risk of running out of vaccine stocks because they are difficult
to reach, UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said.
"Children's lives are at stake," said Mercado.
Last year, her organization procured 2.43 billion vaccine doses for
100 countries, to immunize approximately 45 per cent of all children
below the age of five against diseases such as measles and polio.
Governments, corporations and air carriers should free up affordable
freight capacities to overcome the supply chain disruption, Mercado
said.
dpa