The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday reiterated the importance of finding people who have come into contact with individuals infected with the new coronavirus to control the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
PFor the Organization’s Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, contact tracing applications alone cannot be sufficient to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, thus urging countries to take all necessary health precautions, with a special emphasis on contact tracing, to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
“Mobile (contact tracing) applications can help with contact tracing, but nothing can replace resources and a presence in the field,” Tedros said at a virtual press conference from Geneva.
For the WHO chief, in addition to these contact tracing apps, we also need “workers trained to go door-to-door” to find cases and contacts, and thus “to break the chains of transmission”.
But in this battle with disease, contact tracing isn’t the only tool.
“It has to be part of a complete package. But it is one of the most important,” added Dr Tedros.
WHO also recalls that contact tracing has long been the basis of the response to epidemics, from smallpox to polio, including the Ebola virus and Covid-19.
“As we have said many times, so-called + containment” measures can help reduce the transmission of Covid-19, but they cannot stop it completely, “added the WHO DG, noting that “contact tracing is essential to find and isolate cases and to identify and quarantine their contacts.”
“Responding quickly to new cases and clusters of cases will allow countries to continue on the path of economic recovery, while keeping the virus at bay,” assured Dr. Tedros.
“It is important to identify and map the contacts,” said Dr. Ibrahima Socé Fall, WHO Deputy Director in charge of emergency response, insisting on daily monitoring of contacts.
In this regard, WHO notes that one of the lessons learned from the recent Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which was declared last month, is that “the search for contacts can be carried out even under the most difficult circumstances ”.
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