The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday decried Europe’s shortcomings with regards to the rollout of vaccines describing it as ‘unacceptably slow’.
The world health body also stated that the region’s surge in coronavirus infections was ‘worrying’.
The Director for Europe of WHO, Hans Kluge said in a statement on Thursday said.‘Vaccines present our best way out of this pandemic… However, the rollout of these vaccines is unacceptably slow” and is “prolonging the pandemic’.
‘We must speed up the process by ramping up manufacturing, reducing barriers to administering vaccines, and using every single vial we have in stock, now,’ he added.
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The organization stated that Europe’s virus situation was ‘more worrying than we have seen in several months.’
Five weeks ago, the weekly number of new cases in Europe had dipped to under one million, but ‘last week saw the increasing transmission of Covid-19 in the majority of countries in the WHO European region, with 1.6 million new cases,’ it said.
The total number of deaths in Europe ‘is fast approaching one million and the total number of cases about to surpass 45 million,’ it said.
The WHO’s European region comprises 53 countries and territories and includes Russia and several Central Asian nations.
The organization warned that the rapid spread of the virus could increase the risk of new variants of concern developing.
‘The likelihood of new variants of concern occurring increases with the rate at which the virus is replicating and spreading, so curbing transmission through basic disease control actions is crucial,’ Dorit Nitzan, WHO Europe’s regional emergency director, said in the statement.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK