It was extremely irresponsible of Matt Hancock to say that infections were 'out of control'. What does that mean exactly? The implication is that there's nothing we can do to prevent the spread so we might as well give up, cast off our masks, have lovely big family christmases, reopen hospitality ... and most of all stop bothering with all this tedious, expensive testing and contact tracing, which our government never wanted to do in the first place and have only been half-heartedly attempting since around June.
This is the press briefing where Dr Ryan (WHO) said it was not out of control:
Can't remember exactly what he said but it was something like - the new variant increases the R number by about 0.5, so with the current measures in place the R number in the tier 4 areas has gone from around 1.1 to 1.6, but this is still far lower than the 'natural' R number for this virus with no measures in place, which is around 3. So the measures we are taking are having a big impact, we just need to up our game and work harder. He compared this virus to others with much higher R numbers - 17 or 18 - which have been controlled, usually in countries with far fewer resources than the UK.
It reminds me of the time back in March when loads of people were clamouring for WHO to 'Declare a pandemic!' even though it made no practical difference to WHO's response or guidance, as 'pandemic' is not an official thing, it's just a rhetorical word. They eventually gave in and 'declared a pandemic' in the hope that it would encourage certain countries ('You know who you are') to take the situation more seriously. They said they had resisted doing this because it might cause countries to give up efforts to control the virus. Pretty much the next day, Boris announced that they were going to stop contact tracing because it was all just too hard, and that many of our loved ones would sadly die.
When WHO say things like we need to work harder, they don't generally mean harder lockdowns. They have always been clear that lockdowns are for when you've fucked up and that they're extremely damaging. There's a guest on that briefing from the UN Development Programme who describes some of the social and economic problems of lockdown measures in a world context. WHO's advice has consistently been to find, test, isolate and care for every case, trace and quarantine every contact. Almost a year into this clusterfuck we've got a bit better at some parts of this but the whole thing is still very half-hearted and ineffectual and it's still not working as a joined up strategy.
The EC recommended reopening borders, not because they're not worried about the new UK variant, but because they are very worried indeed about the wider impact of closed borders. Dover - Calais has been shut for less than two days and there are now almost 3000 lorries backed up in Kent. There are stranded travellers all over the world, unable to get home to the UK and there are stranded travellers in the UK, unable to return to their home country.
Closing borders is a really big deal.
There's a piece of international law, agreed by all member states of WHO, called the International Health Regulations ( www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241580496 ), which describes how the WHO and all member states should behave in a pandemic. It's all about keeping borders open to trade and travellers if at all possible. There are a whole series of hoops that countries must go through before they restrict international travel. 55 countries (most recent report I could find: www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/uk-travel-ban-which-countries-b1777876.html ) have now implemented a travel ban or severe restrictions on travel to and from the UK. I very much doubt that many or any of them jumped through all the hoops set out in the IHR so they're probably all in breach of international law.
At a few points during this year, WHO have issued reminders to all countries of their IHR obligations (they never criticise individual countries so you have to keep an eye on the news to see who's just closed their borders to whom, and which countries the reminder is really aimed at). They haven't done that this time:
As the list of countries imposing travel restrictions on the UK grew, the World Health Organization's (WHO) Europe director, Hans Kluge, said member states would convene to discuss strategies and limit travel, while maintaining trade.
This, more than anything, suggests that WHO are taking this very seriously indeed. They are facilitating 55 countries to bypass the international health regulations in order to come up with sensible travel bans.