“Now is not the time to slack off,” World Health Organization Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge told an online press conference.
At the start of the fall, the European region, which includes 53 countries including some in Central Asia, was again the epicenter of the epidemic, accounting for 60% of new Covid cases worldwide.
At the same time, a peak in seasonal flu cases was recorded.
With this new wave of Covid, deaths and admissions to intensive care are only increasing slightly, the WHO stressed, emphasizing the link with vaccination.
"Vaccination remains one of our most effective tools against influenza and Covid 19," he said on World Polio Day.
This disease, which mainly strikes the very young and causes paralysis, has practically disappeared in the Western world, but a variant of the poliovirus derived from oral vaccines has recently been detected in the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Israel and New York.
Less virulent than the natural virus, this variant can however cause serious symptoms, such as paralysis of the limbs of unvaccinated patients.
Rare, this variant has become more common in recent years due to low vaccination rates in some communities.
No case of the naturally occurring polio virus has been reported in Europe for over twenty years.
"It's not something we can take for granted," Kluge said.
Across the region, coverage with the third dose of polio vaccine decreased by 1% between 2019 and 2020. By 2021, only 25 of 53 countries had achieved polio vaccine coverage of 95% .
© 2022 AFP