The EU Commission sees Europe at the end of the “acute” phase of the corona pandemic.
"We are entering a new phase of the pandemic by moving from emergency mode to more sustainable management of Corona," said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday.
Your authority recommended that the EU member states use the currently lower level of corona infections to strengthen health systems and pandemic preparedness.
Von der Leyen explained that caution was still required.
"The number of infections in the EU remains high, and many people are still dying from Covid-19 worldwide." New variants could also appear and spread.
"We need to vaccinate, boost and test more."
"With the new variants, the question is not whether they will come, but rather when," said EU Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas.
The EU Commission therefore called on the member states to increase booster vaccinations and sequence enough samples to identify new variants.
Decline in the hospitalization rate
When monitoring the infection process, the authority proposes “setting up integrated monitoring systems that are no longer based on the identification and reporting of all corona cases, but on reliable and representative estimates”.
Due to mass vaccination and the appearance of the less aggressive omicron variant of the coronavirus, the number of hospital admissions and corona deaths in the EU countries has fallen sharply in recent months, despite the continued high number of cases.
As a result, many countries have relaxed or withdrawn the corona measures.
With the pandemic, the EU countries had also set up their own production of vaccines.
"After an unprecedented expansion, the EU has reached a production capacity equivalent to three to four billion vaccine doses per year," said EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton.
Part of this capacity should therefore be retained for future health crises.