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Join on Telegram Rabat – With deaths linked to Covid-19 having increased by 11% in Europe, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts 236.000 additional deaths by the end of the year and urges the European continent to keep a wary eye on new coronavirus variants.
The upscaling transmission rates across Europe is “deeply worrying,” the WHO said. According to the latest estimates, Europe has recorded 1.3 million COVID-related deaths, whereas the European vaccination rate has fallen to 14% in the past six weeks due to a lack of access to vaccines in some countries or to vaccine acceptance in others.
“We must increase production capacity and overcome nationalist temptations by sharing vaccine doses,” announced WHO Europe Head Hans Kluge at a press briefing.
Of the 53 European countries, 33 reported an increase of more than 10% in their number of COVID cases over the past two weeks.
“6% of people from low and middle-income European countries are vaccinated. WHO recommended a vaccination coverage of 80% to fight against the pandemic and nearly 850 million doses have been dispatched in the region extending to Central Asia in a period of eight months,” adds Hans Kluge.
Kluge argued that public acceptance of vaccination is crucial to adjust public health and social measures throughout the continent. “Skepticism about vaccines and denial of science is preventing us from overcoming this crisis,” he said.
As many countries prepare to start the 2021-2022 school year, experts have argued that the coming days will boil down to a now-or-never period for the implementation of an effective European strategy to vaccinate populations for safe in-person teaching.
Both WHO and Unicef Europe stated, “Covid-19 vaccine should be given to teachers and other school staff as a target group for the national vaccination plans.”
The French government is expanding its COVID measures by making the newly introduced “health pass” compulsory for both the customers and the 1.8 million employees working in the country’s restaurants, cinemas, museums, and train stations. The operation will help to curb the spread of the Delta variant.
Following WHO’s warning, the Czech Republic announced on Monday it plans to administer booster shots from September to those who were vaccinated at least eight months earlier.
The previous expert consensus was for the booster shots to only be administered to individuals over 60 years of age. As COVID figures continue to jump across Europe, however, the latest recommendations are that all age categories previously vaccinated should be eligible to register for a third dose of COVID vaccination.
