WHO official says social distancing and mask mandates to continue indefinitely in order to protect against new variants of COVID-19
Nickie Louise
Posted On June 23, 2021
When we thought we’re finally done with COVID-19, it turns out we’re not out of the woods quite yet. Today, Dr. David Nabarro, a special envoy on coronavirus for the World Health Organisation (WHO), said that social distancing and mask mandates are here to stay in order to protect against new variants of COVID-19.
Speaking to Sky News today, Dr. Nabarro said the “issue of variants is what we are watching all over the world” and they “are going to go on coming.” According to Dr. Nabarro, mask mandates and social distancing need to remain in place for the foreseeable future “as part of our defense” against COVID, particularly in regions that have high infection rates.
“We will go from Delta to Lambda and then on to the other Greek letters, that’s inevitable, and some of these variants will be troublesome,” he said.
“They [new variants] will be able to break through the vaccine-related protection in a few people and that will cause problems.” He went on to say there was a need to “maintain defenses against the virus to stop it welling up more and more, and that’s going to be the life to come, at least until there’s enough vaccine, and enough certainty, to be sure that vaccination will protect us. Right now we can’t say that.”
Dr. Nabarro added: “I’m basically saying variants are going to go on coming. That’s part of life, we need to pick them up fast, we need to move quickly if we see them in a certain location, we need to build the management of variants into what we call our COVID-ready strategy, which is going to be the pattern for the foreseeable future.”
You can watch the Twitter video below.
“That issue of variants is what we are watching all over the world.”
WHO Special Envoy, Dr David Nabarro says variants of the virus will keep on coming and some “will be troublesome” for vaccine protection.#KayBurley
Get live #COVID19 updates: https://t.co/vnD7sLx2qm pic.twitter.com/saVLQmrGDM— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 23, 2021
