As countries restart, WHO warns about lack of virus tracing

PARIS (AP):

A top world health official warned on Monday that countries are essentially driving blind in reopening their economies without setting up strong contact tracing to beat back flare-ups of the coronavirus.

The warning came as France and Belgium emerged from lockdowns, the Netherlands sent children back to school, and a number of US states continued to lift their business restrictions.

Fears of infection spikes in places that have loosened up have been borne out in recent days in Germany, where new clusters were linked to three slaughterhouses; in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the crisis started; and in South Korea, where one nightclub customer was linked to 85 new cases.

Authorities have warned that the scourge could come back with a vengeance without widespread testing and tracing of infected people’s contacts.

Health officials in the US will be watching closely in the coming days for any resurgence of the virus two weeks after states began gradually reopening, and efforts to assemble contact-tracing teams are under way there and in Europe.

The World Health Organization’s emergencies chief, Dr Michael Ryan, said that robust contact-tracing measures adopted by Germany and South Korea provide hope that those countries can detect and stop virus clusters before they get out of control.

But he said the same is not true of other countries exiting their lockdowns, declining to name specific countries.

“Shutting your eyes and trying to drive through this blind is about as silly an equation as I’ve seen,” Ryan said. “And I’m really concerned that certain countries are setting themselves up for some seriously blind driving over the next few months.”

Other countries are far behind Germany. Britain abandoned an initial contact-tracing effort in mid-March when the virus’s rapid spread made it impossible. Now it is recruiting 18,000 people to do the legwork of tracking contacts.

Britain and other countries are also developing contact-tracing cell phone apps that can show whether someone has crossed paths with an infected person.

In the hardest-hit corner of the US, contact tracers in New York began online training Monday, and Governor Andrew Cuomo said some upstate areas, including the Finger Lakes, could ease their restrictions after Friday.

The governor set a requirement of 30 contact tracers per 100,000 residents for areas to reopen. That translates to about 6,000 workers statewide performing what he described as a daunting task. Cuomo said contact tracing is “a logistical nightmare, never been done before”.

Contract tracing across the rest of the US is a patchwork of approaches and readiness levels.

In loosening up the country’s lockdown, German authorities have spelled out a specific level of infection that could lead to the reimposition of restrictions in local areas. Other countries — and US states — have been vague about what would be enough to trigger another clampdown.

The US has seen 1.3 million confirmed infections and about 80,000 deaths, the most in the world by far, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, four million people have been reported infected and more than 280,000 have died, over 150,000 of them in Europe. Health experts believe all those numbers understate the true toll of the outbreak.

With Monday’s partial reopening in France, crowds formed at some Paris metro stations, but the city’s notorious traffic jams were absent. Only half the stores on the Champs-Elysees were open.

Parisian hairdressers planned to charge a fee for the disposable protective gear they will have to give customers. Walk-ins will be a thing of the past, said Brigitte L’Hoste, manager of the Hair de Beauté salon.

“The face of beauty will change, meaning clients won’t come here to relax. Clients will come because they need to,” said Aurelie Bollini, a beautician at the salon. “They will come and aim at getting the maximum done in the shortest time possible.”

Across the Atlantic, hair salons in Florida contended with tight regulations and pent-up demand as they reopened across much of the state, save for some hard-hit areas. The Fringe Salon in Naples was already booked for the entire week, its capacity limited by the social-distancing rules.

“It’s just pure chaos. Everybody’s excited about getting their haircut,” said owner Trish Boettcher. “People are just randomly calling who are not our regular clients.”