A nurse adjusts her PBT at the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south-west London, where the number of intensive care beds for critically ill people had to be increased from 60 to 120, the vast majority for coronavirus patients is.
Victoria Jones – PA Images | PA Images | Getty Images
LONDON – The World Health Organization on Thursday warned of a tipping point in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, amid growing fears of more contagious variants of the virus that have resulted in a rapid increase in infections.
Countries are scrambling to contain two variants that occur in the UK and South Africa, which are significantly more transmissible, and public health experts are concerned about the possible impact on vaccination.
To be sure, although the variants spread more easily, there is no clear evidence that the mutated viruses are associated with more serious diseases. But more communicable means more people can become infected, and this can mean serious infections and more deaths.
In recent weeks, it appears that optimism about the massive deployment of Covid-19 vaccines has been tempered by the rising rate of virus spread.
“We were prepared for a challenging start to 2021, and that was exactly it,” said Dr. Hans Kluge, regional director of the WHO for Europe, said in a press briefing.
“This moment represents a tipping point in the course of the pandemic where science, politics, technology and values must form a united front to repel this persistent and elusive virus.”
“We are very much in danger”
One year after the health agency’s first report on Covid-19, Kluge reflected on the fact that in 2020 the WHO European region saw more than 26 million Covid cases and more than 580,000 deaths.
Several countries in Europe have introduced national lock-in measures over the past few days, and more are expected to follow suit in the coming week in an effort to ease the pressure on already strained health institutions.
View of an almost deserted city center on 15 December 2020 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Niels Wenstedt | BSR Agency | Getty Images News | Getty Images
As of Wednesday, nearly half of all countries and territories in Europe had a seven-day prevalence of more than 150 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The WHO estimates that more than 25% of those report ‘very high’ incidence rates and strained health systems.
“I must say that we are very much in its depth at the moment. We are not only in its depth, we are probably in the European region in the most acute phase of transmission and we continue to see (a) really a great impact on hospital wards, ‘said Dr Catherine Smallwood, senior emergency officer at WHO Europe, during the online briefing.
“To be able to start changing any of that, we really need to reduce transmission and we need to control the spread, despite the introduction of vaccinations,” Smallwood said.
The European Commission on Wednesday granted final approval for the use of the Covid vaccine developed by the American firm Moderna.
It was the second vaccine approved by the EU executive, with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine previously given the green light.
The EU, which launched its vaccination program on December 27, has been criticized for the slow rollout of stings in the bloc.
It is catching up with Israel and the US, where large numbers of people have already received a vaccine against the virus.
To date, Europe has recorded 27.5 million confirmed Covid cases and 603,563 related deaths, according to data compiled by the WHO.