Europe has once again become the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, to such an extent that governments are considering reverting to containment measures, rejected by the populations as the Christmas holidays approach. The resurgence of cases of contamination is in fact fueling the debate on the presumed insufficiency of only vaccination campaigns to counter the virus.
According to a tally by Reuters, Europe accounts for more than half of the average number of new cases in seven days worldwide and almost half of deaths, the highest levels since April 2020, in the first wave of the epidemic on the continent. Governments until now believed that lockdowns were no longer necessary due to the rollout of vaccination, but this inflation of cases is changing the game.
No quick fix
In central and eastern Europe, where vaccination rates are lower, countries like Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and
Russia have also had to tighten restrictions. Extending booster shots to a larger part of the population and vaccinating adolescents should be a priority, scientists say. “The real urgency is to enlarge as much as possible the group of people vaccinated”, declared Carlo Federico Perno, head of microbiological and immunological diagnosis at the Bambino Gesù hospital in Rome. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is currently evaluating the effectiveness of the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech in children aged 5 to 11. According to virologists, vaccines are not on their own the miracle solution to definitively defeat the pandemic, several of them citing Israel as an example of good practice: in addition to vaccines, the country has strengthened the wearing of masks and introduced passports
health after an outbreak of cases a few months ago.-
(With Reuters)
–
–
