‘We are in possibly the most dangerous period of this pandemic’ – WHO’s Dr David Nabarro

Dr David Nabaro of the World Health Organization (WHO) advises people not to travel abroad for minor reasons, although the European Digital Information Certificate came into force on 19 July.

r Nabaro said the current situation is too precarious for travel to be the norm again.

“Of course everyone wants to go back to traveling,” he told RTÉ Radio 1 Today with Claire Byrne.

“But this virus is not disappearing, we are in the most dangerous period of this pandemic with options and huge mortality in the poorer world at the moment.

“I see no reason to tell people ‘Go back to normal, don’t worry,’ and not according to my reading of epidemiology.

“So the answer is essential, just travel, please.”

Dr Nabaro, Covid-19’s special envoy to the WHO, said he believed the EU was right to set up a system, but that the virus was “very active”.

He added: “You can get a very bad climb in certain places and you can travel 50 km and there is nothing.

“It’s very localized and we don’t always know where it is, so I’m careful when traveling.”

Asked if Europe would see a number of cases similar to January in the coming weeks, Dr Nabaro said he did not think it would escalate so soon.

“I don’t think it will take weeks, I think it will be longer, but we could,” he said. “We don’t know if we’re going to do it, and that’s the world we live in right now.”

He added that he expects a variant of the virus to appear, against which the vaccine will not protect.

“It’s incredibly uncertain, there are options, and we don’t know if there will be an option that can beat the vaccines,” Dr. Nabaro said.

“We suspect it will probably happen, it’s just one of those things in the way viruses work.

“So we tell everyone that the virus will not go away. Let’s keep behaving as if it’s still a lot around, because new options are coming all the time. “

As many 60-69-year-olds in Ireland have not yet received their second stroke due to the waiting time between AstraZeneca vaccines, Dr Nabaro said another vaccine should be used.

“It’s worth saying what the WHO guidelines are and vaccinating your most vulnerable immediately and making sure they fire two shots,” he said.

“Do your best to give them two shots, and if you can’t give them two shots from the same vaccine, it’s now recognized that having different vaccines for the first and second shots is better than not having the second. at all. “