The COVID-19 pandemic won’t end until at least 70 percent of people are vaccinated, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) European director warned, who also criticized Europe’s vaccine rollout for being “too slow.”
The global health organization’s regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said countries and their populations must not become complacent about the pandemic. “Don’t think the COVID-19 pandemic is over,” Mr. Kluge said in an interview, while adding that vaccination rates needed to increase. “The pandemic will be over once we reach 70 percent minimum coverage in vaccination,” the regional director said.
In the 53 countries and territories that make up the WHO’s European region, including several in Central Asia, 26 percent of the population has received a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. In the European Union (EU), 36.6 percent of the population has received at least one dose and 16.9 percent have been fully vaccinated, according to statistics.
Mr. Kluge said one of his main concerns was the increased contagiousness of new variants. “We know for example that the B.1617 (Indian variant) is more transmissible than the B.117 (British variant), which already was more transmissible than the previous strain,” Kluge noted.
Cases of the so-called Indian variant have been recorded in 27 of the region’s 53 countries, while the number of new cases, and deaths, has fallen for five consecutive weeks, reaching their lowest levels since mid-October.
Worldwide, new cases have dropped for four weeks in a row. But while vaccines have proven effective against coronavirus mutations, people must still be vigilant, Mr. Kluge emphasized.
The Belgian doctor said a major concern was that “people drop their guards as they become complacent,” especially going into the summer months. In addition, large gatherings are on the horizon in conjunction with the European football championship.
Speeding up vaccination
He also underscored that speed is “of essence” during the pandemic. “Our best friend is speed, time is working against us, and the vaccination roll-out still goes too slow,” Mr. Kluge said.
“We need to accelerate, we need to enlarge the number of vaccines,” and European countries needed to show more solidarity. It is not acceptable that some countries start to vaccinate the younger, healthy part of the population, while other countries in our region still did not cover all the health care workers and the most vulnerable people,” he concluded.
