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WHO says youth to blame for coronavirus outbreaks in some countries

31 July 2020 02:28 (UTC +04:00)

Resurgence of coronavirus in a number of countries can be explained in particular by insufficiently careful behavior of younger people as they sometimes flout or ignore measures to protect themselves from the infection, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva Thursday, APA reports citing TASS.

"Evidence suggests that spikes of cases in some countries are being driven in part by younger people letting down their guard during the northern hemisphere summer," he said. The WHO chief underlined, "young people must take the same precautions to protect themselves and protect others as everyone else" because they "an be infected", "can die" and "can transmit the virus to others."

He then also recommended that everyone "learn to live with the virus, and to take the steps necessary to live our lives, while protecting ourselves and others - especially those at highest risk of COVID-19." Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recalled that many countries have more than 40% of coronavirus-related deaths reported from long-term care facilities, while this figure reaches 80% in certain states.

"Today I’m proud to announce that WHO has created a Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health," he said, explaining that it is important to understand how people make decisions to predict them. "The technical advisory group consists of 22 outside experts from 16 countries, with expertise in areas including psychology, anthropology, health promotion, neuroscience, behavioral economics, social marketing and more. This new group will advise WHO on how to increase and improve the use of behavioral and social sciences in a range of health areas, including COVID-19."

In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 17,201,200 people have been infected worldwide and more than 670,400 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 10,716,200 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.