The World Health Organization (WHO) is warning on the “very worrying” pace of COVID-19 transmission in Europe, noting that another half a million people could die by February, as AFP reports.
The number of new cases a day is rising by almost six weeks in a row in Europe, and the number of daily deaths is rising by just over seven consecutive weeks – about 250,000 illnesses and 3,600 daily deaths.
The current increase is fueled by Russia, which has recorded 8,162 deaths due to COVID-19 in the last seven days, Ukraine (3,819 deaths) and Romania (3,100 deaths), according to the AFP report.
Current transmission rates in 53 European countries are of “grave concern” and new cases are nearing record levels, exacerbated by the more transmissible Delta variant of the virus, the WHO Europe director Hans Kluge told a media briefing.
“We are, once again, at the epicentre,” Kluge complained. “If the region follows its current trajectory, Kluge said, another 500,000 COVID-19 related deaths could occur in the region by February next year,” he added.
WHO explains this increase by a mix up of “insufficient vaccination coverage” and “the relaxation of public health and social measures”, amid a ‘more transmissible Delta variant of the virus’.
WHO further called on people to “massively wear the protection facemasks”. “We must change our tactics, from reacting to surges of Covid-19, to preventing them from happening in the first place,” Kluge said, arguing that reliable forecast show that if a level of 95% usage of face masks is reached in Europe and Asia, up to 188,000 lives out of 500,000 that risk to be lost by February 2022 will be saved.