GENEVA: The World Health Organization wants to work with governments to gradually resume normal passenger travel, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, while stressing that the global coronavirus crisis is not over.
Tedros followed the advice of the WHO's coronavirus advisory committee of international medical experts, which asked the UN agency to develop travel strategies, and to analyse safety measures such as health screening, isolation and quarantines.
"This is a difficult issue because it is a question of confidence between [WHO] member states, it is a question of safe travel", acknowledged Didier Houssin, WHO heads the advisory body.
"But it is also a very important aspect for the activities in many countries which are relying very much on air travel", he added.
The pandemic of COVID-19 is clearly still a global health emergency and is of particular concern as it spreads more widely in countries with weak health systems, the WHO chief said on Friday.
Three months after the WHO's emergency committee first advised the WHO's director-general to declare a public health emergency over the new coronavirus, Tedros said: "The pandemic remains a public health emergency of international concern".
Tedros said he had "grave concerns about the potential impact" of the disease "as it starts to accelerate in countries with weaker health systems".
"As we have done clearly from the beginning, we will continue to call on countries to implement a comprehensive package of measures to find, isolate, test and treat every case and trace every contact", Tedros told a briefing at the WHO's Geneva headquarters.
He said the WHO would "continue working with countries and partners to enable essential travel needed for pandemic response, humanitarian relief and cargo operations and for countries to gradually resume normal passenger travel". - Agencies
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