They criticized lockdowns as the primary means to control the virus. They didn't argue against the usefulness of lockdowns in themselves. However, lockdowns have significant impact on poor people getting poorer.

WHO envoy Dr. David Nabarro:

> "We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus"

> "The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it."

> "Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer"

> "Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people aren’t taking their holidays"

> "Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition."