The World Health Organization on Sunday urged Southeast Asian countries to speed up Covid-19 vaccination and rigorously implement public health measures to prevent another surge in cases.

Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director, WHO South-East Asia, said these measures needed to be enforced for longer durations, considering that more transmissible “Variants of Concern” were spreading in several countries.

“We need to continuously strengthen our efforts to test, trace and isolate,” Singh said. “Societal interventions such as physical distancing, hand hygiene and proper wearing of masks needs to be stringently implemented.”

Singh added that public health and social measures were cost-effective ways to reduce the spread of Covid-19. “In addition to personal protective measures, they include cleaning, disinfection, ventilation, surveillance,” she said. “Contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. Physical distancing measures such as limiting the size of gatherings, maintaining distance in public or workplaces, domestic movement restrictions; and international travel-related measures.”

Singh urged countries to follow a “risk-based approach” for public health and social measures. “These measures should be implemented by the lowest administrative level and continuously adjusted to the intensity of transmission and the capacity of health systems,” she said.

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The WHO official noted that there was an overall decline in cases in South-East Asia due to decreasing infections in India, but some countries were still witnessing a surge.

Singh warned governments against complacency in enforcing Covid-19 protocols. “We must not forget that the pandemic is still around,” she said. “We must continue to implement combinations of public health and social measures until globally there’s high Covid-19 vaccine coverage among health workers, and high-risk and vulnerable groups.”

Experts in India have also warned about the emergence of a third wave of infections if Covid-19 protocols are not followed. On Saturday, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Director Dr Randeep Guleria that with crowds building up after the easing of restrictions across India, the “inevitable” third wave of infections could hit the country in the next six to eight weeks.

India is still recovering from the aftermath of the second wave of Covid-19, which at its peak saw more than 4 lakh daily cases, and thousands of deaths every day. Several states experienced crippling shortages of oxygen, hospital beds, medical supplies and vaccines during the second wave, leading to citizens taking to social media to ask for help.

The country’s daily cases have now begun to decline. On Monday, India reported 53,256 new coronavirus cases and 1,422 deaths. This is India’s lowest daily rise in cases in 88 days, according to reports. The country’s total count of infections since the outbreak of the pandemic in January last year rose to 2,99,35,221. The toll went up to 3,88,135.

Meanwhile, the Delta variant of Covid-19, first detected in India, has caused concern globally. World Health Organization Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan on Friday said that the variant was becoming the globally dominant variant because of its significantly increased transmissibility.

There are more than 17.84 crore cases of the coronavirus disease across the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than 38.64 lakh people have died due to the infection.