Dr. Dorit Nitzan, Regional Emergency Director at the World Health Organization, said that while lockdowns are sometimes unavoidable, they should only be used as a last resort, as countries around the world reintroduce measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“Lockdowns should be implemented when there is no other choice. Avoiding close contact with others, contact tracing, quarantining and isolating the infected all sound easy, but we see how hard it is to implement,” she said during a briefing hosted by the American Society of University of Haifa (ASUH) and the Canadian Friends of Haifa University last week.
Nitzan said that unless a vaccine becomes available, Covid-19 is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and as such, the public needs to adhere to public health guidelines unless they want more lockdowns to occur.
Her comments came on the heels of England announcing its second lockdown this year as cases passed 1 million and its death toll reached 46,555. Israel, Italy, Spain, and many other countries are also in the midst of some variation of a national lockdown as well - a measure that has induced controversy among the public.
Rather than being an effective strategy to combat Covid-19, the decision to implement a lockdown is “a reflection of lack of trust in government,” said Dr. Manfred Green, Director of University of Haifa’s International Master’s Program in Public Health, previously head of the Public Health Branch of the IDF and founding Director of the Israel Center for Disease Control.
Although the public was advised on what they need to do in order to keep the virus at bay - avoid large crowds, maintain personal hygiene, wear a mask - their lack of trust in the government and, in turn, the government’s lack of trust in their own public health officials has prevented that messaging from being implemented on a large scale.
“These are pretty simple measures. But when there’s a lack of trust, these measures are not implemented and that’s when you see the outbreak getting out of control,” Green observed. “A large number of lives were lost unnecessarily because of a lack of cooperation from the public. This trust takes a lot of time to develop and this is a lesson we need to learn: how to develop this trust and educate our leaders on how to operate during a pandemic.”
Green also pointed out that many public health officials were either sidelined or replaced when they disagreed with their government leaders and this inability to listen to experts has exacerbated the public’s lack of trust.
“I don’t think there’s any serious person involved in Covid-19 who believes lockdowns overall is a good strategy,” added the third expert speaking at the briefing, Dr. Andrew Morris, Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and Medical Director, Sinai Health System-University Health Network Antimicrobial Stewardship Program. “There are two main strategies followed around the world: trying to in some way manage those infected and preventing overwhelming spread. And the other approach is the Twaineese/Australia/New Zealand/Vietnam example where you do as much as possible to essentially eliminate it or keep it at a very low and suppressed level. I err on that side because the failures we’ve seen from the other approach we can see in real-time.”
As scientists rush to find a vaccine, there are currently 46.5 million cases and 1.2 million Covid deaths around the world.
Once the vaccine becomes available, the next subject of debate is who gets it first. While many public health experts agree that the elderly and healthcare professionals should be the first to receive immunization, Dr. Green has bucked this trend and suggests children should be the first to undergo vaccination.
“I actually think the first people to be vaccinated should be children and health care workers,” he suggested. “Children should go back to school and they should be protected there. With all the limitations of Covid-19, they are still a source of infections. Once vaccinated, they can go visit grandparents and hug them and they won’t be as much of a danger. Also children respond very well to vaccines. Unfortunately, people like me who are older, don’t respond as well.”