The highly contagious Delta variant reduces the effectiveness of vaccines against disease transmission to 40%, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, urging people to continue wearing masks and other health measures.
“Vaccines save lives, but they do not completely prevent the transmission of COVID-19”, explained Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a regular press briefing devoted to the pandemic, which is wreaking havoc in Europe.
“There is data that suggests that before the arrival of the Delta variant, vaccines reduced transmission by about 60%, with Delta this dropped to 40%,” he said.
“In many countries and communities, we fear that there is this misconception that vaccines have ended the pandemic, and that people who are vaccinated no longer need to take other precautions,” he added.
The director general of the organization opened his traditional opening remarks on the situation in Europe, hit hard by a fifth wave of infections, caused by a mixture of insufficient vaccination rates and slackening – probably premature in view of the domination of the Delta variant in the region – in barrier gestures and restrictions.
“Last week, more than 60% of COVID infections and deaths worldwide occurred in Europe,” Dr Tedros recalled, adding that “this significant number of cases translates into an unbearable burden on health systems. health and health workers exhausted ”.
With more than 2.5 million cases and nearly 30,000 deaths recorded in the past week, the Old Continent is by far the region of the world most affected by the pandemic, according to official data collected by Agence France-Presse. And the trend remains on the rise.
WHO Europe was alarmed on Tuesday about the “grip” of COVID in Europe, which could cause 700,000 additional deaths on the continent by the spring, in addition to the 1.5 million deaths already counted.
“If you watch the developments closely, people in Europe are at pre-pandemic levels of social interactions, of gatherings and many other things, despite being in the midst of a very strong resurgence. , very strong cases and for some countries an enormous pressure on the health systems ”, denounced Michael Ryan, director of the WHO in charge of emergency situations.
“The reality is that the virus will continue to be transmitted intensely in this type of environment,” he warned, as winter forces people to spend more time indoors and makes them more reluctant to ventilate, not to mention that after two years of the pandemic a certain fed up has set in.
“All countries remain vulnerable to these high levels of disease transmission, and we should continue to do all we can to reduce our exposure to the virus,” he said.
Taking advantage of being on the eve of Thanksgiving in the United States, where she is from, Maria Van Kherkove, who leads the fight against COVID at the WHO, recalled that although vaccinated all other gestures barriers were essential, in particular the wearing of the mask, the distancing and the ventilation of the rooms where one is located.
Taking the analogy of slices of Gruyère which individually let the virus pass through the holes but which are superimposed form a protective barrier, she regretted that many countries have removed all the layers at once allowing the virus to restart.
She also warned of the danger of the appearance of variant even more dangerous than Delta if the traffic continues so intense.
The scientific chief of the organization, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, however, insisted that even with Delta, the vaccines remained effective “in more than 80% of cases to prevent the most serious forms” of the disease.