Face masks and social distancing should continue to stop virus spread, says WHO expert

A doctor working for the World Health Organisation has said that mask wearing and social distancing still need to remain especially in areas of high infection.

Dr David Nabarro, a special envoy on Covid-19 for the WHO, said the restrictions need to be around until vaccinations can protect us all.

Speaking to Sky News he said there was a need to "maintain defences 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 that due to variants "as well as using vaccine as part of our defence, we're going to have to continue by keeping a bit of a distance from each other and then I'm going to suggest that the physical distancing part of one metre plus and mask wearing will be necessary, particularly in places where there's a lot of virus. We can't just simply ignore that".

David Nabarro has said masks and social distancing should remain (REUTERS)

When asked about people returning to the workplace he said that employers would bed to ensure they were not a hotbed for transmissions.

Dr Nabarro said: "There will be a need for every single workplace to be asking, 'is it right that we stop wearing masks and stop maintaining distance?'

"Because that's the way you prevent people from getting infected and that's the key to stopping big spikes building up... I am advocating continued physical distancing, continued mask wearing for the time being, including in countries where there's a lot of vaccination."

He added that some of the variants that emerge "will be troublesome, they will be able to break through the vaccine-related protection in a few people, and that will cause problems".

Dr Nabarro said: "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".