The EU Infection Protection Authority (ECDC) urgently advises member states to restrict contact with the population, especially in view of the approaching festive season.
“The festive season at the end of the year is traditionally associated with activities such as social gatherings, shopping and travel, which harbor significant additional risks for increased transmission of the delta variant,” says a new risk analysis from Wednesday.
Thomas Gutschker
Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.
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Model calculations based on current vaccination trends and immune reactions would result in “a greatly increased risk” that the dominant delta variant of the virus “in December and January” would overload the health care system.
In Germany, whose vaccination quota is around the EU average at 68 percent of the total population, contacts must be reduced by at least 20 percent compared to the current level so that the crisis can be managed at all.
"Some time flexibility"
You are in a situation in which you can no longer choose between accelerating the vaccination campaign and restricting public life, warned the director of the agency, Andrea Ammon: "We have to do both." a vaccination rate of more than 80 percent have the highest coverage in Europe, would get into trouble if their contacts only increased by ten percent. The sooner action is taken, the sooner draconian restrictions can be avoided, says Ammon. Low-threshold measures include compulsory masking and working from home.
The reason for this threatening situation is the diminishing effectiveness of the vaccines. There are different studies on how strong this effect is; it depends on the vaccine, but also on the interval between the first and the second vaccination. The infection control authority generally concludes from the studies that there is adequate protection against serious illnesses “up to six months” after the first full vaccination. Nonetheless, she recommends that adults receive a booster vaccination “after six months at the earliest”, especially from the age of forty.
When asked about this contradiction, Ammon pointed out that the recommendation had been adopted by the responsible European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Their representative, Marco Cavaleri, who is responsible for vaccination strategy, said that so far they have relied on clinical studies in which the booster vaccination was only given after six months.
"A little flexibility in terms of time" could be sensible, Cavaleri admitted.