WHO: Europe’s vaccination programme ‘unacceptably slow’

Senior World Health Organisation official says lagging immunisation campaigns could prolong pandemic

A healthcare worker prepares a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Bloomberg

European nations’ immunisation campaigns against Covid-19 are “unacceptably slow” and could prolong the pandemic, a senior World Health Organisation official said Thursday.

Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, said vaccines “present our best way out of this pandemic".

But Dr Kluge said that so far, only 10 per cent of Europe’s population had received a dose and only 4 per cent had been fully protected with two doses.

“As long as coverage remains low, we need to apply the same public health and social measures as we have in the past to compensate for delayed schedules,” he said.

Even those numbers hide the true scope of the problems facing the EU’s 27 nations, where only about 5.6 per cent of people have had a first vaccine shot, the bloc says.

In Britain, that figure is 46 per cent of the population.

Dr Kluge warned European governments against having “a false sense of security” after starting their immunisation campaigns.

He said Europe remained the second-most affected region in the world for new coronavirus infections and deaths.

The WHO said new Covid-19 infections were increasing in every age group except those over 80, in a sign that vaccinations were having an effect in slowing outbreaks.

But the UN health agency said “early action” to stop the virus’s spread must be taken in the absence of high immunisation rates.

Faced with rising hospital admissions that were overwhelming hospitals, French President Emmanuel Macron imposed new measures to battle a resurgence of the virus, including a three-week school closure and a domestic travel ban.

The WHO says there were 1.6 million new cases and almost 24,000 deaths in its European region last week.

The EU has counted more than 612,000 virus-related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

And if other European nations such as Britain, Russia, Switzerland and others are counted, Europe has had more than 928,000 deaths related to the virus.

“The region’s situation is more worrying than we have seen in several months,” said Dr Dorit Nitzan, the WHO Europe’s emergency manager,

Dr Nitzan warned people not to travel or gather in large groups over the coming religious holidays.

“Many countries are introducing new measures that are necessary and everyone should follow as much as they can,” she said.

Dr Kluge said his message to European countries was: “Now is not the time to relax measures."