UN health agency's advice for the holidays: Don't hug

The World Health Organisation has an unwelcome but potentially life-saving message for the holiday season: Dont hug.

To stop the spread of the coronavirus, WHOs emergencies chief said on Monday that the shocking rate of COVID-19 cases and deaths, particularly in the US, means that people shouldnt get too close to their loved ones this year.

The epidemic in the US is punishing. Its widespread,” said Dr Michael Ryan. “Its quite frankly, shocking, to see one to two persons a minute die in the US a country with a wonderful, strong health system (and) amazing technological capacities, he said. At the moment, the US accounts for a third of all COVID-19 cases in the world, Ryan added. According to Johns Hopkins University, the country has recorded more than 280,000 coronavirus deaths to date.

Ryan was responding to a question during a news conference about whether hugs could be considered close contact which the UN health agency has generally advised against in areas of high coronavirus transmission.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHOs technical lead on COVID-19, said most transmission happens among people who tend to spend a lot of time together sharing meals and indoor spaces, in workplaces or homes but its sometimes hard to disentangle how exactly the virus was spread.

Added Ryan: Its a horrible thing to think that we would be here as the World Health Organisation saying to people, Dont hug each other. Its terrible. That is the brutal reality in places like the United States right now, he said.

In November, UK chief medical officer Chris Whitty also told Britons that they shouldnt hug or kiss their elderly relatives during this years holiday season if you want them to survive to be hugged again. WHOs director of vaccines, Dr Kate OBrien, warned that while new immunisation campaigns to combat COVID-19 should help slow the pandemic, having vaccines is not going to be a switch that means an automatic end to the pandemic.

Last week, Britain became the first Western country to approve the experimental shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech; the country is poised to start vaccinating its highest-risk populations on Tuesday in its biggest-ever immunisation campaign.

OBrien said that people who have concerns about receiving a COVID-19 vaccine developed in less than a year should learn more about the science, calling such worries really legitimate questions”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Federal staff and is auto-published from a syndicated feed.)