WHO advises against hugging family members at Christmas

The World Health Organization emergency chief advised not to be too close to family members during the holiday season and to avoid hugging in order to stop the proliferation of the new coronavirus.

Michael Ryan spoke during an online press conference at the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO), and relied on the “shocking” numbers of cases of covid-19 and deaths, especially in the United States, to defend the distance between close people during the Christmas season.

The WHO emergency chief answered a question about whether hugs could be considered “close contacts” that the United Nations health agency has recommended avoiding in areas with a high spread of the virus.

“It is horrible to think that we would be here as a World Health Organization telling people not to hug. It is terrible. But that is the brutal reality in places like the United States right now,” admitted Michael Ryan.

“It is quite shocking to see that one to two people per minute die in the USA, a country with a wonderful and strong health system and fantastic technological capabilities “, maintained Michael Ryan, noting that the country is the third with more cases of the disease in the world.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the country registers more than 280 thousand dead due to the new coronavirus to date.

The technical officer for the WHO covid-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, stressed that the most contagions happen between people who tend to spend a lot of time together and share meals in closed spaces, workplaces or homes, but it is sometimes difficult to ‘unravel’ exactly how the virus spreads.

In November, UK government official medical adviser Chris Whitty also said that the British should not hug or kiss their older relatives during the festive season “if they want them to survive to be hugged again”.

WHO Director of Vaccines Kate O’Brien, meanwhile, warned that while new immunization campaigns to combat covid-19 should help slow the pandemic, “having vaccines will not be a switch” that means your automatic end.

Last week, the United Kingdom became the first western country to approve the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and starts vaccinating its most at risk population on Tuesday in the largest vaccination campaign ever in the country.

The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,535,987 deaths resulting from more than 67 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report made by the French agency AFP.

The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.

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