Containment measures are adopted until April 19 in Belgium. This Wednesday, a national security council is meeting to decide on the continuation of the events, undoubtedly an extension of these measures.
Jean-Luc Gala, professor at UCLouvain and specialist in infectious diseases, was invited to La Première this morning.
For him, if the containment must be maintained, the measures should not be tightened. “No, I think that we absolutely must not strengthen them, we must absolutely not harden them, otherwise you will completely lose this support from the population and that would be a disaster in terms of epidemic control. On the other hand, it must be accompanied by measures which have not yet given their full force and for which we are very late, that there is an increase in the tracing and diagnosis of infected cases and their contacts. This has been done extremely well in other much smaller countries with far fewer resources than Belgium.“.
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For him, it is necessary to impose the wearing a mask, “because wearing a mask is the second essential pillar to avoid increased transmission in the population and a rebound effect“.
Because, for him, the social distancing of 1.50m does not work. “The distance of 1.50m is rubbish. We know that it is a distance which is absolutely minimal and which does not correspond to anything. There are plenty of extremely intelligent mobilization models, particularly from companies that have worked for the space shuttle, which have clearly shown that the spread of the virus goes far beyond this famous 1m50, which by the way is not already extremely well respected by the population. This virus, depending on climatic, atmospheric and environmental conditions, can sometimes be carried or transmitted up to seven or eight meters away. So this 1.5m distance is good, but it is not enough“.
Julie VanH
We recall that the Security Council is this afternoon.
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