© AFP
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Member States must “take urgent action against the ongoing epidemic resurgence in Europe”. So said Andrea Ammon, the director of the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC). ECDC also warns of “very high pressure on health services” around the holiday season.
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The European health service is not only sending out a warning, it is also calling for an increase in the general level of vaccination in Europe, “especially in the most backward countries”. According to top woman Andrea Ammon, there is still a large vaccination gap that does not seem to be closing quickly and “that offers a lot of room for the spread of the virus”.
Ammon’s video message also states that ECDC is recommending the booster shot for all people over the age of 18, with priority for those over the age of 40. “We urgently need to focus on bridging this immunity gap, offering booster shots to all adults and reintroducing non-pharmaceutical measures,” it sounds.
Holiday flare-up
Ammon also warns of a flare-up of the epidemic during December and January, especially the holiday season. The ECDC expects “measure fatigue” in particular then. “Especially in private gatherings around the holidays, people might want to compensate for last winter.”
The latest ECDC scenarios indicate that the potential burden of the delta variant in Europe will be very high in December and January, “unless public health measures are taken now, coupled with efforts to increase the proportion of vaccinees in the total population”.
In the European Union, 67.7% of the population has received two doses of the vaccine, but the differences between Member States are huge. For example, according to figures from Tuesday, only 24.2% of Bulgarians have been vaccinated, compared to 86.7% of Portuguese.
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